Author: Mary Heers

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Outdoor Public Art Retells Utah’s Golden Spike Story

Golden Spike Visiting Logan, Douwe Blumberg, Artist Courtesy & Copyright Mary Heers, Photographer
Golden Spike Visiting Logan,
Douwe Blumberg, Artist
Courtesy & Copyright Mary Heers, Photographer

Locomotive Advancing within Buffalo Eye Douwe Blumberg, Artist Courtesy & Copyright Mary Heers, Photographer Locomotive Advancing In Buffalo Eye
Douwe Blumberg, Artist
Courtesy & Copyright Mary Heers, Photographer

“Distant Thunder,”
Michael Coleman, Artist
at Golden Spike National Monument
Courtesy & Copyright Mary Heers, Photographer

Monument to their Memory, Ilan Averbuch, Artist, Golden Spike State Park at Reeder Ranch, Brigham City, UT, Photo Courtesy & Copyright Mary Heers, Photographer Monument to their Memory
Ilan Averbuch, Artist
Golden Spike State Park at Reeder Ranch, Brigham City, UT
Photo Courtesy & Copyright Mary Heers, Photographer

Early this spring, a semi-truck with a long flat bed pulled into the USU parking lot next to the cemetery and parked. Lashed down firmly on the flat bed was a giant railroad spike, covered in gold leaf and very impressive to see from a distance. But walking up to it, I could see it was covered in sculptured forms. There was an Indian astride a horse; the shaggy head of a buffalo. But what really caught my attention was the close up of the buffalo eye staring right at me. Reflected in the pupil was a steam engine, coming down the tracks, right at me. I felt the chill of the inevitable crash.

The train brought hunters with guns, hide hunters who killed and took only the hides, shipping them by the bale to industries back east. When there were no more buffalo to be shot, they collected the bones and shipped them to St Louis to be crushed into fertilizer. You could see the crash coming, and knew it would be devastating – to the buffalo and the Indians whose livelihood depended on them.

Walking around to the other side of the spike, I found a very different story. Here were the laborers who had laid down the Transcontinental tracks – the Chinese, the Irish, the Civil War veterans, the Mormon graders- Each standing proudly on the other’s shoulders, all the way to the top. I breathed in the nobility of these men for a difficult job well done.

This giant golden spike’s final home will be standing upright in a 23 acre public park in Brigham City, close enough to the Forest Street exit to be visible from I-15. Until then, we are going to have to wait to see the final two sides of the spike.

But in the meantime, there is another new art piece to go see outside the Golden Spike National Park at Promontory Point.

As I pulled into this parking lot, I was astonished to see a massive chunk of railroad track, rising up from the ground and curving slightly to a vanishing point in the sky.

I was reminded of a conversation I’d has few years ago, when I was collecting train stories, with a man who had once had a summer job hammering spikes on a railroad crew. He was fifteen- half the age and half the size of the other men. But he caught the rhythm.

Tap the spike into place. Swing in the spike maul. One, two, three. Pick up the next spike.

This story helped me understand the restless energy I felt looking at the track sculpture – one more tie, one more rail, one more spike. Repeat. These tracks were going where no tracks had gone before.

Outdoor public art can be storytelling at its very best.

And now a footnote for the engineers listening in: The giant golden spike is actually 43.2319 feet tall. That’s because 43.2319 is the square root of 1869.

This is Mary Heers and I’m Wild About Utah

Credits:

Images Courtesy & Copyright Mary Heers, Photographer
Featured Audio: Courtesy & Copyright © Friend Weller, Utah Public Radio upr.org & Cook Laboratories https://folklife.si.edu/archives-and-resources/cook-labs-records
Text: Mary Heers, https://cca.usu.edu/files/awards/art-and-mary-heers-citation.pdf
Additional Reading: Lyle Bingham, https://bridgerlandaudubon.org/

Additional Reading

Wild About Utah, Mary Heers’ Postings

Swanson, Kirsten, Heers, Mary, Ride the rails: A storytelling exploration of Utah’s early railroad, Utah Public Radio, May 18, 2022 at 9:12 AM MDT, https://www.upr.org/arts-and-culture/2019-05-10/ride-the-rails-a-storytelling-exploration-of-utahs-early-railroad

Golden Spike Monument by Douwe Blumberg, Golden Spike State Monument, The Golden Spike Foundation (GSF), https://spike150.org/park/

Driving of the Spike Tour, News, Douwe Studios, October 24, 2023, https://www.douwestudios.com/news

Hislop, Craig, Golden Spike monument coming to USU Tuesday, Cache Valley Daily, Apr 26, 2024, https://www.cachevalleydaily.com/news/golden-spike-monument-coming-to-usu-tuesday/article_ee1eb334-0376-11ef-b19c-c725f46266d9.html

Williams, Carter, Utah gets $1.5M donation as it unveils more plans for new golden spike monument, KSL.com, April 11, 2024 at 7:47 p.m. https://www.cachevalleydaily.com/news/golden-spike-monument-coming-to-usu-tuesday/article_ee1eb334-0376-11ef-b19c-c725f46266d9.html

Don’t Confuse these two places. The Golden Spike National State Park is 30 miles West of the “Gateway” Golden Spike State Monument at Reeder Ranch in Brigham City
Golden Spike National Historic Park, US National Park Service, US Department of the Interior, https://www.nps.gov/gosp/index.htm

S.C.R. 6 Concurrent Resolution Creating the Golden Spike State Monument, Utah State Legislature, Signed March 13, 2024, https://le.utah.gov/~2024/bills/static/SCR006.html

“Distant Thunder” Sculpture at Golden Spike National Historical Park Honors Bison’s Past, https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/golden-spike-national-historical-park-distant-thunder.htm

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Naturally Flowing Carbonated Water

Naturally Carbonated Water: Soda Springs Geyser, Soda Springs, Idaho, Courtesy & &copy Mary Heers, Photographer
Soda Springs Geyser, Soda Springs, Idaho

If you like drinking carbonated water as much as I do, you’ll be happy to hear you can drink as much as you’d like, -absolutely for free- just north of the Utah border in Soda Springs, Idaho.

Idan-Ha Mineral Water, Courtesy & &copy Mary Heers, Photographer
Idan-Ha Mineral Water
Courtesy & &copy Mary Heers, Photographer

Small Bubbling Soda Water Pool, Courtesy & &copy Mary Heers, Photographer Small Bubbling Soda Water Pool
Courtesy & &copy Mary Heers, Photographer

When settlers heading to California passed through this area on the Oregon Trail, they saw the many bubbling natural springs.

In 1838 Sarah White Smith, wrote in her diary, This is indeed a curiosity. The water is bubbling and foaming like boiling water.” But the water wasn’t hot.

She also wrote how delighted she was when she made bread with the water. “The bread was as light as any prepared with yeast.”

All this stirred up some fond memories I have of my high school science teacher who always made interesting things happen in the classroom. She put a pinch of sodium bicarbonate (commonly called baking soda) in a dish and added a couple tablespoons of water and vinegar. Voila! The dish began “bubbling and foaming like boiling water.”

For centuries something like this has been going on under the ground in Soda Springs. The carbonate rocks are mixing with slightly acidic water, sending CO2 bubbles to the surface .

By 1887, Soda Springs had grown to a bustling town. Some enterprising residents came up with a plan to capture the CO2 gas. They built giant drums over one of the springs and then built a five-mile pipeline to their bottling plant. There they mixed the gas with clear water from another spring and bottled it. The soda water was called “Idan-ha” and was shipped out on the railroad far and wide.

It won first place at the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893 and again in the World’s Fair in Paris in 1905.

A decade later, another group of businessmen went to work on a plan to build a mineral water swimming pool resort.

On Dec 2, 1937, drillers dug down to 315 ft. No luck. They went to dinner. Then they heard a gush of water shoot up outside the window. They said it was “roaring like a dragon.” The whole area was enveloped in water vapor and Main Street was flooded. It took them two weeks to cap it.

The water wasn’t warm, so the businessmen abandoned their plans for a swimming pool resort.

The town knew their geyser was accidental; it was man-made- but still a plume of water shooting 100 ft into the air was impressive to look at.

Engineers put a timer on the cap. Now the carbonated water shoots up for 8 minutes every hour on the hour.

You can watch it for free.

As for drinking the naturally carbonated water, the city has set aside three springs.

My guide drove me to his favorite site just outside of town We scrambled down a grassy hillside to a small bubbling pool about the size of a basketball. He whipped out a cup and dipped it in. I drank. It was cold and fizzy.

“Good as Perrier,” I said.

He smiled, “Now I like you.”

I liked him too. Even more, I loved drinking this tasty treasure bubbling up from the ground.

This is Mary Heers and I’m Wild About Utah

Credits:

Images Courtesy & Copyright Mary Heers, Photographer
Featured Audio: Courtesy & Copyright © Friend Weller, Utah Public Radio upr.org
Text: Mary Heers, https://cca.usu.edu/files/awards/art-and-mary-heers-citation.pdf
Additional Reading: Lyle Bingham, https://bridgerlandaudubon.org/

Additional Reading

Wild About Utah, Mary Heers’ Postings

Price, Mike, Soda Springs, We Are East Idaho, EastIdahoNews.com LLC, September 9, 2019, https://www.eastidahonews.com/2019/09/we-are-east-idaho-soda-springs/

Hooper Springs Park, California National Historic Trail, Oregon National Historic Trail, National Park Service, US Department of the Interior, https://www.nps.gov/places/000/hooper-springs-park.htm

A man-made CO2 Geyser in Utah:
Weaver, Lance, Crystal Geyser, Grand County, Utah, Geosights, Utah Geological Survey (UGS), Utah Department of Natural Resources, January 2018, https://geology.utah.gov/map-pub/survey-notes/geosights/crystal-geyser/

Map on page 43 shows water from Soda Springs flows into the Bear River and the Great Salt Lake:
Dissolved-Mineral Inflow to Great Salt Lake and Chemical Characteristics of the Salt Lake Brine, United States Geological Survey (USGS) and The College of Mines and Mineral Industries, The University of Utah, 1963, https://ugspub.nr.utah.gov/publications/open_file_reports/ofr-485/Lake%20Brine%20Interpretive%20Reports/WRB%2003%20-%20Part%201%20-%20Hahl%20&%20Mitchell%20-%201963/Water%20Resources%20Bulletin%203%20Pt%201%201963.pdf

This piece originally aired August 25, 2023 as Naturally Carbonated Water https://wildaboututah.org/naturally-carbonated-water/

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Delta’s Snow Goose Festival

Delta's Snow Goose Festival: Snow Geese at Gunnison Bend Reservoir, Delta Utah Courtesy & Copyright Mary Heers, Photographer
Snow Geese at
Gunnison Bend Reservoir
Delta Utah
Courtesy & Copyright Mary Heers, Photographer
Every Spring the city of Delta, Utah puts out a call to come on down to the annual Snow Goose Festival.

Right on schedule thousands of snow geese fly in from as far south as Mexico to fatten up on the spilled grain in the local farmer’s fields, and rest a bit before continuing their migration to the far north.

I arrived at about noon and sure enough found a few hundred of the white geese bobbling peacefully in the reservoir just outside of town. Then came a great crescendo of geese calls and I looked up. A couple hundred more geese were flying in like a precision jet team. They lowered their feet and waterskied to a soft landing, somehow managing not to bump into each other. And then the scene quieted down. It was time for a long afternoon nap.

Perhaps these geese wondered why so many spectators had come to the reservoir to watch them nap on their day off. But we had come to marvel at their ability to catch the slow rising tide of lengthening days and ride it to the north, timing their arrival to the melting of snow and greening of the arctic tundra. In the far north, the snow geese will split off into pairs, build their nests, and raise their young.

But in the fall, they will form up in large flocks once again for the return trip because they know flying together is far more efficient than flying alone. People that study the physics of flying tell us that birds can get an energy savings of 65% from the free lift of upward airflow around another bird’s wing tips.

A few years ago, I had read a book about a man in Ontario, Canada, Bill Lishman, who had carried out a migration experiment with geese. I dug out my copy of his book, Father Goose, and reread it.

Bill had hatched some Canada goose eggs in an incubator at his home. The geese followed him everywhere, toddling across his lawn, swimming in his pond, and going airborne while chasing him on his motorcycle. One goose liked to fly inches above his head, looking a lot like the bill of an amazing baseball cap. Eventually Bill coaxed the geese into the air behind his ultralight plane.

Could these young geese, raised without adult geese role models, be able to migrate? Bill launched his trial – a 400-mile fall journey from Ontario to a nature reserve in Virginia. The geese flew with Bill’s plane for 7 days, overnighting along the way, and settled down for the winter.

The next big question lay ahead: would the geese be able to find their way home unaided in the spring?

Unexpectedly, on April 1, the geese took off under cover of night. For two weeks, Bill and his team searched for them to no avail. Then Bill got a phone call from his wife. The geese had returned and were waiting for him on the lawn in front of his house in Ontario.

Did they remember landmarks in the terrain they had crossed on the way south? Did they navigate by the sun and stars?

Bill had shown that young geese could find their way home. But just exactly how they did it is still a very well-kept secret.

This is Mary Heers and I’m Wild About Utah

Credits:
Photos: Courtesy & Copyright Mary Heers, Photographer
Featured Audio: Courtesy & Copyright Mary Heers
Text: Mary Heers, https://cca.usu.edu/files/awards/art-and-mary-heers-citation.pdf
Additional Reading: Lyle Bingham, https://bridgerlandaudubon.org/

Additional Reading

Wild About Utah, Mary Heers’ Postings

See thousands of geese migrating through Utah during the 2024 Delta Snow Goose Festival, Feb 1, 2024, https://wildlife.utah.gov/news/utah-wildlife-news/1842-see-thousands-of-geese-migrating-during-the-2024-delta-snow-goose-festival.html

Snow Goose Festival, Delta Area Chamber of Commerce, https://www.deltautahchamber.com/snowgoosefestival

Snow Goose Festival, Millard County Tourism, https://visitmillardcounty.com/events/snowgoosefestival/

Snow Goose Festival Video, Utah Division of Wildlife Resources, https://fb.watch/r0SBEaTY5i/

Snow Goose | Canada Goose Comparison, All About Birds, Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Cornell University, https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Canada_Goose/species-compare/59939631

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Local Sled Dogs-Sheer Joy

Sled Dogs-Sheer Joy: Sun, Snow, Sheer Joy, Courtesy & © Mary Heers, Photographer
Sun, Snow, Sheer Joy
Courtesy & © Mary Heers, Photographer
As the snow continued to pile up this winter, I started to ask around about sled dogs.

I soon bumped into a friend who had a friend in Preston who trained and occasionally raced his team of 14 Alaskan Huskies.

This musher graciously offered to give me a ride on one of his training runs. I showed up all smiles as he was harnessing his team. The dogs were excited to go and actually howling with happiness. The musher asked if I wanted to get in – or ride up the trail a bit on a snowmobile with his teenage son to a more level spot. In a rare moment of sanity, I opted for the snowmobile.

The machine had just pulled out of the yard when I heard his son say, “Oh, No!”

I looked back in time to see the sled tip over, sending the musher sliding across the driveway and under my car parked at the end of it. I jumped off the snowmobile as the dogs shot past us with the empty sled. The dogs were gaining on a truck up ahead, then shot past it with the snowmobile in hot pursuit.

I was left standing in a snowbank wondering if I’d wandered into a James Bond movie.

My first encounter with sled dogs had gone a lot smoother. I was visiting Denali National Park in Alaska and the rangers were introducing us to one of the dog teams that they still use to patrol the park.

But the most famous sled dogs are the freight teams that carried anti-toxin from Anchorage to Nome during an outbreak of Diphtheria in 1925. The dog teams ran a thousand miles and are credited with saving hundreds of lives.

For the last 50 years, modern mushers have retraced this journey in the ultimate sled dog race, the Ididarod. The best account I’ve read about the world of training sled dogs and running the Ididarod is Gary Paulsen’s book Winterdance. Just before going on a training ride, he discovered, “the gangline was trembling, quivering like a string on a guitar. It fairly hummed and I felt there was great power there. The trees in the yard went by in a mad blur and we left the yard at warp speed.”

Paulsen also lets us in on the deep relationship mushers form with their dogs: “As they understand you will give them meat when they run, and love when they run, and your soul when they run – as they learn to feel that, understand that, know that – they are no longer sled dogs – they become distance dogs, dogs that cannot, will not be stopped.” Paulson ran the Iditarod in 1983. It was a wild ride that took 17 days. But he finished.

Meanwhile, back in Preston, our teenage hero had caught up with the runaway team, made a flying leap from the snowmobile onto the empty sled, and somehow managed to stop the team. Pretty soon the musher and I caught up.

“Do you still want to get in?” he asked.

“Sure,” I said.

And we were off. The dogs settled into a steady trot. From then on it was all Sun and Snow and the sheer Joy of sliding quietly through the magnificent winter scenery.

This is Mary Heers and I’m Wild About Utah

Credits:
Photos: Courtesy & Copyright Mary Heers, Photographer
Featured Audio: Courtesy & Copyright Mary Heers
Text: Mary Heers, https://cca.usu.edu/files/awards/art-and-mary-heers-citation.pdf
Additional Reading: Lyle Bingham, https://bridgerlandaudubon.org/

Additional Reading

Wild About Utah, Mary Heers’ Postings

Paulsen, Gary, Winterdance: The Fine Madness of Running the Iditarod, Harvest Books, HarperCollins February 17, 1995, https://www.amazon.com/Winterdance-Fine-Madness-Running-Iditarod/dp/0156001454/

Idaho Sled Dog Challenge, https://idahosleddogchallenge.com/