A world of welded wonders.
UFO sites don’t usually include UFO’s, but Vaughn Reid’s does. At his UFO Landing Site in Clawson, visitors will find a flying saucer made of welded steel crashed into the gray shale cliff right next to its signpost.
There’s a Mars rover sitting around somewhere, too, a gift from a group of engineers from Poland competing in the annual University Rover Challenge held at the Mars Desert Research Station in Hanksville. They had so much fun visiting on their way to the competition that they left the rover as a way to say thanks for the hospitality, and as a companion piece to the UFO, of course.
But the UFO isn’t really what the place is about. That’s just the gateway gimmick. This desert homestead, off Highway 10 in the San Rafael desert between the towns of Castle Dale and Ferron, is the life work of a retired machinist and welder who found his inner folk artist. Reid can’t for the life of him quit collecting and creating new things out of the old. Polite visitors are welcome during daylight hours when the Reids are at home.
Once past the spaceship, guests encounter a number of steel sculptures — doodads, whirligigs, and even a Do Nothing Machine that just sits there and does nothing.
“I can’t stop building machines even if they don’t work,” says Reid.
Reid, 88, graduated from South Emery High in 1956, then moved to Price to attend Carbon College. In his free time, he perused the Greek-owned scrapyard in town. When the owner offered to sell it, Reid saw his dream come true.
He went home and asked his father to help him with financing, but he flatly refused. According to Reid, his father said, “You’re not gonna be a damn junk collector!” He chuckles and says, “Boy, was he ever wrong.”
But Reid’s scrappy scrapyard dream was put off by his stellar welding and machinist skills, which got him noticed by the foreman at Hartman and Jensen Machine and Welding. At 19, Reid was quickly promoted from sweeping the shop floor to designing and building bolt bins and shelves. He was then asked to engineer plans for a welding shop and build it. By the following year he was foreman of that very shop.
Clad in overalls and a plaid cotton shirt, Reid still has the sparkling eyes he must have had at 19. His ultimate support is his partner Ellie who shows off his treasures. In the kitchen, she points to the truly gigantic gas stove she cooks on, bought at auction from Ruby’s Inn.
“It was only $15 and came with two ovens,” she says. The vintage cast iron ovens were too big to bring into the house and were left up on the hill among many other treasures.
Good friend and moniker-sharer Reid Black, a retired blacksmith and member of the Antique Machinery Club, has helped on all the projects. The two Reids also make and sell wood-base table lamps and coat racks with wrought-iron hooks that would look right at home in any Yellowstone hunting lodge.
Vaughn Reid explains that the machine shops where he worked in Carbon and Utah counties, including Mountain States Steel and Geneva Steel, required him to use the very best materials on company projects. “But on your own,” he says,” you have to gather up what you can.”
To that end, Reid has built his home and every sculpture and outbuilding on the grounds from materials he found, got at auction, or bartered for. The main house was inspired by the Tree Room at Sundance and is built around a soaring 20-foot trunk that twists its way to the ceiling. Reid got that free from a logger who was angry his crew had wasted time cutting it, as it couldn’t be made into useful lumber. Reid brought it home and had to build a pole crane just to stand it up. He brought in two similar logs for end posts and used other enormous timbers to frame the building, which required him to build saws just for cutting and mitering them.
The home rests on steel floor joists.The inspector asked him if he planned to park an airplane there and Reid said no, the floor was just for regular daily use. When asked why he used steel, Reid retorted, “Because it’s cheaper than wood.” Of course, his steel came cheap because Reid had reclaimed it all from other worksites, including 14-foot I-beams on the perimeter.
The heater in the tree room was made of the boiler from a sawmill, something that sat in the brush near Joe’s Valley Reservoir for 60 years before Reid dragged it down the hill and reworked it into something beautiful, historic and functional. Real wagon wheels converted into chandeliers with tin light fixtures hang from the soaring ceiling. A pioneer oxen yoke bearing the word “Faith” is displayed on a large wall, Reid’s personal reminder of the tenacity of his ancestors.
Even the equipment Reid uses to make his projects was hand-made or came second-hand. In the blacksmith shop, he made the forge. In the woodworking room, lathes and drill presses were being discarded by Utah Valley State College. Reid’s favorite lathe was given to him when his first employers, Hartman and Jensen, were upgrading. “It’s the lathe I started on,” he says, patting it fondly. “I recognized it immediately.”
Feature Image by Michael Lindsay.
