Sep 17, 2015 - Sale 2391

Sale 2391 - Lot 334

Price Realized: $ 3,500
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 2,000 - $ 3,000
(UTAH.) Rhead, James Bourne. Diary of a trip across Utah to stake out a frontier farmstead. 42 manuscript pages plus other undated memoranda. 12mo, original plain sheep, front joint split, small repair at head of backstrip; first page toned, contents otherwise clean. (MRS) Vp, 15 to 30 May 1878
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James Bourne Rhead (1858-1911) came as a young boy from Iowa to Coalville, UT, just east of Salt Lake City. This diary describes a trip he took as a young man from Coalville across the Uinta Mountains to one of Utah's last arable frontier areas, a tiny settlement on the Green River known as Ashley's Fork. It was soon renamed Vernal, and is now the largest town in sparsely-settled northeast Utah.
Apparently, some of the first settlers of Ashley's Fork were from Coalville and had sent favorable reports. Rhead joined a party of 12 Coalville men and 24 horses to seek new homesteads on the frontier. They passed through only one substantial town, Heber City. Next came Daniels Canyon, in which the trail crossed the creek 66 times in 15 miles; Rhead wrote "undoubtedly this run of 15 miles is the roughest road I ever traveled or ever want to travel" (17 May). Near the Duchesne River, they met a group of 20 Uintas, "about half bucks and half squaws . . . going to the settlements to trade for flour," as their reservation's supply was entirely gone. They carried passports from their Indian agent, who they "seemed to disrespect very much, saying many times, Him heap lie, heap lie" (21 May).
The next day, Rhead's party reached Ashley's Fork, where "several farms are located round about here, and the grain in several places is up 3 or 4 inches. For some distance round the bottom is thinly dotted with log huts." They continued on a few miles to the Green River, then up the river a few miles to where their friends Reese and Burton had settled (apparently in what is now the small town of Jensen). After visiting "the folks of our old acquaintance," the party divided up: "some went hunting game, and others hunting farms" (24 May). Finding the soil unpromising, they returned to explore the Ashley's Creek land, where they found "but a comparatively small quantity improved, but nearly all is staked" (26 May). They camped three miles up the creek "where the best unclaimed land was situated," and rose at 3:30 a.m., "getting up at this early hour so as to stake our claims and make a good drive that day toward home. By eleven o'clock the stakes were driven and we were on our return trip."
The return trip featured a visit to their camp by a "keen and talkative" Indian named Yank who showed off his 4-acre farm and sold them a horse (27 May). The diary concludes with the party approaching Coalville: "As it is customary with us to sleep a little once in a while, we went to bed at half past 10 o'clock" (30 May).
Biographical sources show that Rhead was a Mormon, though there is little overtly religious content to this diary. One sure indication of his faith was his description of Indians as "Lamanites" on 21 May. The travelling party seemed to forgo alcohol or caffeine, and their one gambling incident would probably not cause any distress, even though it transpired on a Sunday: "At evening a chapter in the bible was read by 4 of the boys, with a nickel at stake for the 2 best readers." Rhead went on to a long career as a freighter and rancher, but remained in the Coalville area--he never did settle east of the Uintas.