Mansions that Mining Built

Utah Stories

Mansions that Mining Built

When mining was king in Utah the money financed some of the grandest mansions in Salt Lake City.

Alison Lafazan

April 6, 2015

download — Photo courtesy of the Utah Heritage Foundation

Kearns Mansion

Kearns Mansion is currently known as the Governor’s Mansion. The Kearns Mansion was the grandest home in Utah when it was built in 1902 by Thomas Kearns, co-owner of the Silver King Mining Company in Park City. He was one of the wealthiest and most powerful men in Utah. Kearns moved out West in 1883 to seek his fortune, leaving his family’s Nebraska farm behind. He started out with the lowest-paying job in the mine, worked his way up and eventually co-owned the Silver King Mine.

Furnishings for the Mansion came from Europe and many European craftsmen were employed. They spared no expense, with the final cost at completion tallied at $350,000. The Kearns Mansion was designed by Carl M. Neuhausen and is constructed of oolitic limestone quarried in Manti, Sanpete County.

Legend has it that five silver coins are hidden somewhere in the Kearns Mansion. Play the “Secret Silver Game” to find the hidden coins. Information can be found through The Utah Heritage Foundation’s website.

Kearns also built the Kearns Building in downtown Salt Lake City. He owned The Salt Lake Tribune newspaper and was elected a US Senator.

603 East South Temple, Salt Lake City

769px-David_Keith_Mansion,_Salt_Lake_City — Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, UTAH,18-SALCI,26-1

David Keith Mansion and Carriage House

The David Keith Mansion and Carriage House, designed by Frederick A. Hale, was built by David Keith between 1898 and 1900.

Keith, a Canadian citizen, had mined in Nova Scotia, California, and Nevada before moving to Utah in 1883. He came to Park City to help install the Cornish pump in the Ontario Mine and stayed on as a foreman. In 1892, he became business partners with his good friend Thomas Kearns and organized the Silver King Mining Company. Keith served as president and Kearns as vice president. Fifteen years later, the Silver King Mine had paid more than ten million dollars in dividends. Keith and Kearns together purchased the Salt Lake Tribune in 1901. Keith’s other businesses included Pioneer Roller Mills and Keith-O’Brien Company.

529 E. South Temple St., Salt Lake City

Judge Building

Mary Judge, the business savvy widow of John Judge, had the Judge Building built after his premature death in 1892 at the age of 48 from miner’s consumption. The commercial style building was originally known as the Railroad Exchange Building.

John left his family considerable wealth from his partnership with David Keith and Thomas Kearns in developing the Silver King Mine in Park City. Mary increased her family’s fortune through other mining investments, real estate, and the construction of the Judge Building downtown at the southeast corner of Main Street and 300 South. She also built a mansion at 737 East South Temple. In memory of her husband, she financed the Judge Memorial Hospital, also known as Judge Miner’s Hospital, which provided medical treatment for aged and infirmed miners. It closed in 1915. In 1920, it was remodeled and opened as the Catholic parochial school, Judge Memorial.

8 East Broadway, Salt Lake City

Clift Building

The Clift building was designed by Leslie Chesebro, the same architect of the old East High School, and is one of Salt Lake City’s largest terracotta facade structures. The design is mostly the Second Renaissance Revival Style. It was commissioned in 1919 by Virtue Butcher Clift after the death of her husband, Francis Clift. It was built on the site of the old Clift Hotel, which was a popular Salt Lake boarding house.

Francis Clift immigrated to the United States from England in 1832 and made his way west by an ox team along with the Walker Brothers. He found work as a pioneer mining man and later became a financier.

272 S. Main Street and 10 West Broadway, Salt Lake City

Sarah Daft House

Sarah Ann Daft is another wealthy widow who proved to have brilliant business sense. She was one of the pioneers who arrived in Salt Lake City in 1856. Her wealth came from significant investments in mining as well as being a major stockholder in the Independent Telephone Company. Daft Block on Main Street and the Daft Building were some of her real estate holdings.

With money designated in Daft’s will, the Sarah Daft House was built in 1913 for the aged, infirm and blind of both sexes. She wanted to provide affordable quality care in a home-like setting. For residents, a one-time fee of $800 was charged for a lifetime of perpetual care. This fee included all meals, medical attention, clothing, laundry, housekeeping and burial. The retirement home is one of the oldest nonprofit, continuously operated assisted living facilities in the western United States.

The Colonial Revival style home was designed by architect William H. Lepper whose other work includes the chapel at Rowland Hall and St. John’s Cathedral in Logan.

737 S. 1300 E., Salt Lake City

Utah Stories

Judge Building, Park City mining, Salt Lake Mansions, Sarah Daft Home

Alison Lafazan

Alison has been writing human interest stories and highlighting local businesses for Utah Stories since she graduated from the University of Utah with a degree in Communications in 2014. She has also contributed a few photographs to accompany her stories. Wanting to learn about Utah’s local businesses and activities is what led Alison to start reading Utah Stories and eventually writing for them. She transferred to Salt Lake City from Houston, Texas with her job with a major airline. She is reluctant to call Utah home even though she has lived here for more than 30 years. Alison was born in Texas, but has also lived in Oklahoma, Kansas, Louisiana, and Idaho. She’s still trying to figure out where to call home, but she likes the west the best. Working for an airline gives her the opportunity to pursue her passion for traveling. If she’s not working or traveling, she is hanging out with her husband.

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Before Alta was known for powder days and lift lines, it was a silver mining town clinging to the side of a narrow canyon. In the late 1800s, men lived at 8,000 feet, went underground each day, and endured winters that regularly buried buildings in snow. This past summer, that mining town resurfaced — literally — during construction at the Alta Ski Area.

To understand what Alta really looked like, you don’t begin with legend. You begin with its trash — and this time, that happened almost by accident.

Alta Ski Area was installing underground water reservoirs to support snowmaking. Because the project sits on Uinta-Wasatch-Cache National Forest land, an archaeologist was required to monitor the excavation. No one expected the trench to produce much.

But, It did.

Artifacts began surfacing almost immediately. Enough that the Forest Service contacted the Utah State Historic Preservation Office for help. Lexi Little, who coordinates the Utah Cultural Site Stewardship Program, helped mobilize nearly 30 volunteers to assist with what quickly became a focused two-week excavation.

Winter deadlines were approaching. The pipes for the reservoirs had to go in the ground. There wasn’t time for a slow, extended dig.

“It was two weeks of digging in the dirt and helping figure out exactly what we were looking at,” Little said.

Most of the people screening soil weren’t professional archaeologists. They were trained stewards from around Utah — part of a statewide volunteer network that now approaches 500 people. They poured dirt through shaker screens, scanning for fragments that could piece together a town long buried.

“Archaeology is human trash,” Little explained. “Archaeologists are very into trash.”

Alta had left plenty behind.

https://youtu.be/hzIHzx3OGoo?si=dKcl2CEz-t6FZzYw

Victorian-style ceramics appeared first — the kind typically used in hotels. Medicine bottles followed. Ink bottles. Hand-blown glass. A porcelain doll’s foot surfaced from the soil, a small detail that shifted the mental image of the town. Families were here. Children were here. This wasn’t only a camp of miners.

The bottles helped establish time. Manufacturing details — whether glass was hand-blown or mold-made, whether a maker’s mark appeared on the base — allowed archaeologists to date many of the artifacts to the 1870s through the 1890s, when Alta was booming as a silver mining town.

“That gives you that range of dates for when Alta was really booming,” Little said.

One reusable soda bottle clearly stamped “Salt Lake City” connected the canyon to the valley economy below.

Then something unusual rolled out of a dirt pile.

A corked bottle. Intact. Liquid still inside.

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