Kimberly (Utah)
Piute County
49-78605
Kimberly is a ghost town in the northwest corner of Piute County, Utah, United States. The place is located high in Mill Canyon on the flank of Gold Mountain in the Tushar Mountains, in Fish Lake National Forest, south of Interstate 70 Kimberly emerged as a gold mining town in the 1890s and was initially until 1910. During the 1930s, the city was briefly revived, but she has been uninhabited since about 1938. Most known Kimberly was the birthplace of Ivy Baker Priest.
History
Foundation
Prospectors began in 1888 in the field at the Gold Mountain to find gold. Newton Hill built here in 1891, the Annie - Laurie - mines, and Willard Snyder began the Bald Mountain Mine. Snyder put in Mill Canyon on the territory of a city, which he called Snyder City. It settled on some farms, but to grow properly, the city began in 1899, as a native of Pennsylvania investor Peter Kimberly bought the Annie Laurie Mine and other mines. Kimberly brought his possessions in the Annie Laurie Consolidated Gold Mining Company, which built a Cyanidlaugungsanlage here.
Growth
The now renamed in the Kimberly town began to boom. The natural terrain in the Mill Canyon Kimberly told in two parts: Upper Kimberly, the residential area further up the Canyon and Lower Kimberly, the business district, which had been originally Snyder City. The main street of Lower Kimberly resulted in a horseshoe shape around a bend in the canyon. Kimberly quickly became the leading gold mining camp in Utah and had two hotels, two stores, three saloons; also two newspapers were published. The County established in 1900, the Gold Mountain School District and built a block schoolhouse. The highest number of students in 1903 was recorded at 89. The school year was, however, opposed to the usual in North America from April to November in order to save the school children the arduous path through deep snow.
The boom period 1901-1908 is considered the golden age of the city; Annie Laurie Company took over several other mining companies and paid at this time nearly 500,000 U.S. dollars in dividends. 1902, the company employed 300 miners, and the population of the city reached 500 people. The winding road in the canyon was continuously filled with carts ore, precious metals and Supply transported to and from the railway station in Sevier. This strong traffic made the road impassable even in winter. In 1905, was born in a house at the north end of Lower Kimberly Ivy Baker Priest. She practiced under President Dwight D. Eisenhower from the Office of the Treasurer of the United States.
Like many other mining towns of the West, Kimberly was known as a place where things get wild and sinful. The brothels were famous and drunkenness common. The city had problems with violence, even murder. It was said that the prison with the two cells was the most stable in the vicinity of one hundred miles.
Decline
Kimberly was in 1905 by the death of Peter Kimberly at a turning point. The Annie Laurie Company was sold to a British company, which lacked the experience to lead a mining company. The new owners tried to reduce labor costs, where they introduced a truck system in which the workers received vouchers that could only be redeemed in the store, which was owned by the mining company. From anger many miners went away. In addition, the Company had borrowed large amounts of money to build a new processing plant and was therefore in a vulnerable position when it came to the panic of 1907. The Annie Laurie Consolidated Gold Mining Company finally declared their bankruptcy in 1910, the mines and the facilities in the city were closed. The assets of the company for which Peter had 1902 Kimberly knocked out an offer in the amount of five million U.S. dollars, was sold at auction for $ 31,000. The United States Census in 1910 found a population of 8 for Kimberly.
In the following years, few men remained in Kimberly; they bewerkstelligten especially smaller maintenance work. In 1931, a new vein of ore was found and built a small mill. The company hired about 50 miners to operate the mine, so again gave residents in Kimberly. This new deposits of gold and silver ore in 1938 was exhausted and Kimberly was abandoned. Most of the usable buildings were dismantled and taken away in 1942. Both the Piute County and the Gold Hill Mining Company laid claim to the ownership of the old prison building; after many years in Kimberly, it was finally brought to the Lagoon Amusement Park in Pioneer Village in the north of the state.
Kimberly's high altitude location makes it a great part of the year inaccessible. However, many remnants of the city are still recognizable. The upper end of the canyon was filled with overburden. Ruins of numerous blockhouses and built in timber frame construction building located in the lower section of the valley. The skeletons of Annie Laurie Mill still stands, and a few mining facilities are intact.