An avalanche buried Alta’s past. A construction crew just uncovered it

Jeremy Moore found the first days of the excavation of the ground under Alta Ski Area pretty mundane, especially by archeological standards.

The resort was installing snowmaking pipes along a flat stretch between its Albion and Wildcat bases. Now home to the Transfer Tow, it was known as Water Street during the Town of Alta‘s mining heyday. In the first day and a half of digging last summer, Moore saw mostly dirt.

Then the bones emerged. And bottles. Boot soles and shards of fine china and ink wells. And bullets – lots of bullets.

“At the end of that second day,” he said, “we started pulling out hundreds and hundreds of artifacts.”

Moore, a professional archeologist brought in by the U.S. Forest Service to oversee the dig as a matter of protocol, realized he needed more eyes and hands on site. He tracked down representatives from the Utah State Historic Preservation Office for help. That agency then called upon its robust cultural stewardship program for volunteers. In three weeks’ time, they sifted thousands of artifacts out of the rubble. Most date back to the late 1800s, at the height of Alta’s mining boom.

Some of those finds — including a full bottle of alcohol and a leather hat that doubled as a headlamp — will be on display during an Alta Archaeology Lab open house Thursday in the second-floor conference room of the North Capitol Building, 450 N. State St., Salt Lake City. Representatives from the historic preservation office and its public archeology team will open the lab for viewing at 5 p.m. and give a presentation at 6 p.m.

Moore, who moonlights as an Alta rental shop employee during the winters, admitted he was caught off guard by the eruption of so many relics, some of which were in near-pristine condition.

“Essentially, I’m one person here and my job is to kind of watch and make sure [the workers digging the trench] are not going to mess anything up,” Moore said, “but there are already hundreds and hundreds of things, and I’m trying to screen dirt while I’m watching and trying to pull out artifacts.”

Thousands of mining town artifacts uncovered

Utah has the largest cultural stewardship program in the country with more than 500 volunteers, according to Ian Wright, SHPO’s public archeologist. They are tasked with being the eyes and ears of public land managers, monitoring archeological and cultural sites for damage. During the Alta excavation, dozens of volunteers were assigned a 6-foot-wide pile of dirt to sort through.

They salvaged between 5,000 and 6,000 artifacts, said Chris Merritt, the state historic preservation officer. About a thousand of those were cataloged, he said, but he estimated another million remain buried. Wright said the preservation office hopes to conduct another dig this summer.

Back-to-back disasters likely contributed to the quality of the relics, Merritt believes. The first was the avalanche of 1885, which wiped out Water Street and killed 13 people. In its aftermath, a fire broke out that decimated what was left of the structures on the once bustling street. In tandem, the two events buried items and dissuaded looting. Alta’s cold temperatures further slowed their decay.

The quantity of treasures — as well as an explanation for the presence of newer items, closer to 100 years old — can be pinned to the crowded street’s proximity to Little Cottonwood Creek.

“Think about a town of 1,500 people having a good time with no trash disposal,” Merritt said. “You’re throwing everything in the creek.”

The artifacts don’t have any particular historical significance, said Moore, the archeologist, other than giving a peek into how Alta residents lived at the time.

“It’s not like we’re making a discovery that’s changing our understanding of the history of the Town of Alta,” he said, “but we have seen so many exciting artifacts as we’ve gone through the process, and so many whole artifacts.”

Saloons, silver and shootouts

When Brigham Young called for the end of alcohol distillation in 1861, it cast Utah in a puritan light. Close to the same time, though, the first vein of silver was struck in Little Cottonwood Canyon. The prospect of riches beckoned to a motley cast of characters, and it wasn’t long before the saloons and brothels, as well as Chinese laundromats and apothecaries arrived. They sat shoulder to shoulder with hotels offering silk sheets and restaurants serving caviar.

“This,” Merritt said, “was truly a rough-and-tumble mining town that had a lot of character that we just don’t equate with a lot of the other parts of Utah history at this point.”

Added Wright, “We found bullets everywhere.”

They also found pistols that may have fired some of those bullets. From the dirt, they dislodged a rusty, 16-pound dumbbell and the sole of a shoe with a heart stitched into it.

A broken tincture bottle still bore remnants of a label for Dr. Crossman’s Specific Mixture, which Merritt said was likely an opiate mixed with alcohol. A newspaper ad for the elixir bragged that it cured “Gonorrhoea, Gleets, Strictures and analogous complaints of the Organs of Generation.” It cost $1 a bottle, the equivalent of $30-$33 today.

Two items emerged as the crown jewels of the project, though.

One is the leather hat. It was found frozen and mud-coated, but it is being brought back to life by Anne Lawlor, the collections manager at the Natural History Museum of Utah. Under her care, it looks and feels almost as it would have 150 years ago. Two small puncture holes reveal where the miner would have inserted a “Sticking Tommy” — an iron spike that holds a candle that served as a headlamp.

The other is a dark brown, uncorked bottle of alcohol. It was entrusted to Isaac West, the director of Park City’s High West Distillery, which is believed to be the state’s first legal distillery since Young shut his down. West is working with Uinta Brewing to analyze various components of the liquid, which he believes might be an apple-based sherry or cider. He said it tastes “like horse blanket.”

Most of the found items, though, were much more mundane.

‘They’re like the things in my house’

Volunteer Kim Duffy, chair of the Holladay Historical Commission, said her prize find was an unblemished perfume bottle. But the 73-year-old also uncovered crockery and cooking spoons.

“These things,” she said, “they’re like the things in my house that I touch every day.”

Duffy said the nature of the artifacts make her feel connected to the townspeople and as though 150 years wasn’t so long ago.

The historic preservation office hopes to convey that same message to everyone who views the curios. Though they currently can only be seen at events like Thursday’s, the agency is looking for a permanent home for the collection, which is on long-term loan from the Forest Service. One option is in the new Museum of Utah, which is expected to open in June in the North Capitol Building. Another is to display some items inside one of the lodges at Alta Ski Area.

Wright said the preservation office wants to be “providing people with an opportunity to interact with that heritage.

“We don’t want it just to be forgotten.”