Detroit and the Mythical West.

It is not by accident that a family such as mine, born and raised in Detroit, Michigan, found a home in the America West. My dad grew up reading authors of the American West in the early twentieth century like Zane Grey and Louis L’Amour. When I was a child in the 1950s and 60s, family time was around the T.V. watching The Lone Ranger, Sky King, Roy Rogers, Maverick, Have Gun Will Travel, Wagon Train, Gunsmoke, Bonanza, etc.

The American West, and the characters, whether fictional or non-fictional, who sought adventure and “tamed” the western wilderness, represented to my dad, my family and a great number of fans around the world a sense of adventure, and a belief that good guys win in the end; an important concept in the era of World War Two and the Cold War.

Today the western genre is on life supports. In the troubled times of the 1960s, historians concerned with civil rights, Vietnam, and other social and political issues began to revise how historians of the previous generation interpreted American history, especially the role of Women, Native Americans, African Americans and Hispanics. The West I grew up on was now called the "Mythic West.” The new histories took our western heroes, as portrayed by numerous western writers, and such actors as John Wayne and Jimmy Stewart, and did their best to tear down rugged individualism and the concept of good and evil.

My dad did not care about historians’ revisionist histories. In the mind of the farm boy from Indiana, who found a job making diesel engines at General Motors at the beginning of World War Two, the fictional West was where he would escape.

What he read in his books about the American West allowed him to dream and plan for another life; a life far away from the drudgery of his work as supervisor on the line at G.M. Diesel, a place he worked for 33 years.

The Call of the West was so strong in my dad that when possible our family vacations in the 1950s were road trips to Montana, where my dad spent several summers in the early 1930s working on a road crew in the Yellowstone.

My dad fishing in the Yellowstone, 1933

My brother caught the “west fever” and left for Montana when he was 18, he has lived there ever since. My parents retired to Montana in 1971.

On his eleven acres at the foot of the Bitterroot Mountains, my dad had his dream “ranch”, where he kept quarter horses and enjoyed western living; all before Montana drew new immigrants who wanted to live in Norman MacLean’s land of “A River Runs Through It.”

Two of Dad's horses, very proud of Cindy the new colt.

I’m not writing this to beat the western historian over the head for trying to destroy, perhaps inadvertently, the western dream; I am a western historian and I understand the need to write inclusive histories. But, I also understand the importance the western genre had and still has in portraying a Place called the West that represented the values that have been part of America since the American Revolution. They are values of hard work, self-reliance, morality, sense of mission; values that have defined us as Americans. I have to wonder why these values are now thought to be inherent only to the Mythical West.

And, as for Detroit. I’m sure if my dad was a live today he would be more disheartened than my brother and I, and my family and friends who once lived in Detroit, to see what has become of the City. Like all industrial cities, Detroit had its good and bad points. As a kid, I remember the good. I felt safe riding the Schoolcraft bus from the suburbs to downtown to shop with friends. In the winter, I enjoyed Ice Skating on the River Rough Parkway ice rink. I loved Greenfield Village, where Henry Ford had created an historical village that depicted early American life including Thomas Edison’s Menlo Park laboratory.

Pioneer General store, Greenfield Village, Dearborn, Michigan

Edison's Menlo Park, N.J. Lab at Greenfield Village.

I even found touring Ford’s River Rouge plant interesting, walking on the catwalks high above the furnaces where steel was melted down and poured into frames.

I assumed that all industrial cities had their own unique charm, as Detroit did. But, today, by most accounts, Detroit is a dying city. It remains to be seen if the City will survive. If it does, I suspect it will become a much different city than the industrial city of my youth.

Abandoned Dentist office, Detroit.

Abandoned East Side Detroit Methodist Church

St Christopher House.

Abandoned building with ballroom.

Abandoned Detroit Theater

Abandoned House, one of too many in bombed-out looking neighborhoods.

I’m so glad that my dad bought into the “Mythic West.” If he had not, he probably would have never left Detroit. But he did, and he found a new home where the air was crisp and smelled of pine trees, where from every window in his house that he built he could see the snow capped mountains, and where life was full of the work he wanted to do-- cleaning his barn, tending his horses, and talking to neighbors who were born and raised in his beloved West.

In in front yard of his Montana "ranch."

Dad with Grandkids on one of his horses.

Like Detroit, I believe the western genre will too survive, and the stories will continue to offer readers the same adventure and excitement about a place that so caught the imagination of my dad’s generation. Thanks to all of you who continue to write about the American west.

Glacier National Park, The Great Northern Railway and the Blackfeet Portraits of Winold Reiss.

In this year of 2010, Glacier National Park is celebrating 100 years as a national treasure. The Park, which straddles the Montana Canadian border in Northwest Montana, is one of the most remote of all parks in the National Park system. If it was not for the effort of railroad giant, James Hill, who pushed legislation through the U.S. Congress establishing Glacier 1910, this scenic wonderland of the Northwest may not have been preserved for future generations.


Glacier National Park

James Hill envisioned a “Playground of the Northwest” that would attract people and their money from all over the world, moneyed people who traditionally traveled and enjoyed the sights and attractions of Europe. To interest visitors to Glacier, Hill, with the help of his son, Louis, embarked on an ambitious building spree, where they built a chain of hotels, chalets, boats, roads, and trails in the mountains of Glacier and created the banner, “See America First,” in order to entice visitors to the Rocky Mountain Northwest.


Many Glacier Hotel

The motive behind all this activity was to promote travel on Hill’s Great Northern Railway.


James Hill was one of several “captains” of the railroad industry in the United States, who made a fortune from investment in the transportation of goods and people on railways that linked America from coast to coast after the Civil War. In 1893, Hill’s Great Northern Railway connected the Upper Mississippi River Valley to Puget Sound.

Great Northern Route

All along the route from Minneapolis to the Pacific, Hill promoted the Northwest as a wonderland of natural beauty; a land that still possessed many of the desirable attributes inherent in the American frontier. Hill also cashed in on the growing popularity of what historians in the twentieth century describe as the mythic West; a perception of the West in the American mind, where the exploits of cowboys, frontier army and Indians denoted adventure and unbridled heroism. The Native Americans, in particular, were of interest because of their role in promoting the “Wild West” with their performances in Buffalo Bill Cody’s wild west shows, which toured the United States and Europe between 1883 and 1917. At every stop along the tour, Native Americans in the show helped to recreate the Indian wars of the plains, audiences loved the excitement of western America. In the early twentieth century, The Great Northern helped to keep this romantic image of Native Americans alive by promoting the Blackfeet Nation, whose reservation extended along the eastern boundaries of the park; a trip to Glacier brought visitors in close proximity to the Blackfeet and their culture.



Blackfeet Indian Reservation

Traditionally the Blackfeet nation consists of three different tribes with the same language and customs; the Pecunnies (Piegans), the Bloods, and the Blackfeet. Before moving onto the Plains, and adapting a nomadic culture centered on the buffalo, the Blackfeet lived around the "forest near Lesser Slave Lake. Incessant war forced upon them by the powerful Chippewas pushed them steadily southward until they reached the wide plains bordering the Rocky mountains in what is now Montana."[Frank Bird Linderman] The Blackfeet eventually occupied a region that ran north to south from Saskatchewan to the Yellowstone. Early Plains settlers and frontier military viewed the Blackfeet as a warrior society, who resisted white settlement in their region. At the end of the Plains Indian wars in the 1870s, the federal government moved the Blackfeet to land reserved for them east of what became Glacier National Park.




Blackfeet 1914

Once on reservations, the Blackfeet, along with other Native America Tribes, occupied the interest of anthropologist, writers and artists; many flocked to the American West in order to record what they believed were the last vestiges of Native America life. James Hill understood the draw that the Blackfeet would have as a “tourists attraction,” the search was on for an artists, who had a close association with the Blackfeet, and who could capture in Blackfeet portraits the colorful character of the people. The Great Northern Railway found such an artist in Winold Reiss.

The Blackfeet gave Winold Reiss the name Beaver Child when they inducted him into the tribe in the winter of 1919.


Winold Reiss

Reiss was born in Karlsruhe, Germany, the Black Forest region. He gained appreciation for cultural differences among people from his father, a German artist who focused his art in peasant cultures of the Black Forest. Both father and son trained at the Royal Academy in Munich. Winold was fascinated with the Indians of North American, a fascination fueled by the novels of James Fenimore Cooper. In 1913, Winold Reiss traveled to American to study the North American Indians. Reiss believed that he could use his art to break down racial barriers by picturing the honor, beauty, and dignity of all peoples. His bold style, coupled with his attention to detail of racial characteristics and cultural customs, made his Blackfeet portraits unique. In the summer of 1943, Reiss once again stayed with the Blackfeet, finishing 75 portraits. Many of these portraits appeared on Great Northern Railway calendars



and were included in a portfolio sold by the Great Northern Railway to promote Glacier National Park and rail travel to Blackfeet country in the 1940s.

Portraits of the Blackfeet people by Winold Reiss:


Jim Blood, an old Pecunnie brave


Only Child, Pecunnie girl sitting against a tepee back-rest made of thin willow sticks


Plume, a modern representation of the Kainahs--proud owner of many lodges, horses and a large heard of cattle.



Short Man, A fine old warrior of the Pecunnies who lived until his eight-sixth year. He was an expert sign talker.


Big Face Chief, A stalwart member of the north Pecunnie band of Blackfeet. His necklace and eagle wing fan mark him as a Medicine Man.)

The Alaska-Canadian Highway

In 1942, the Army Corp of Engineers built the Alaska-Canadian Highway(service men called it the AlCan Highway) from Dawson Creek in the Yukon to Delta Junction, southeast of Fairbanks, Alaska. Initially, the rough gravel road was thought necessary for American national security during the Second World War.



Today, tourist travel the AlCan highway as a more adventurous route to Alaska than traveling by boat along the North American costal waterway.


Inside Passage

A highway to link the lower 48 states to Alaska Territory was first proposed in the 1920s by Donald MacDonald, a senior engineer with the Alaska Road Commission. MacDonald believed that a coastal route from Prince George in British Columbia to Alaska’s southeastern towns would benefit commerce and would be an easy route to forge over already familiar territory. The biggest problem in the 1920s for construction of the highway was convincing the Canadian government that a road through Canada was necessary; The Canadians were reluctant to provide funds reasoning that there were few Canadians living in the area proposed for the highway.

The attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 and the fear of Japanese invasion of the North American coast and the Aleutian Islands brought the proposed highway back to the front burner. The United States Army believed that “a secure overland supply line to the unfinished airfields of the Northwest Staging Route and our military bases in Alaska was urgently needed.” The Army approved the project in 1942 and authorization from the U.S. Congress and President Franklin D. Roosevelt followed within days. Roosevelt understood that for homeland security there needed to be a supply line to airfields and military bases in Alaska. Roosevelt’s proposal was not without objections from those who considered many of the President’s programs “boon-doggles.” Roosevelt’s administration justified the billion dollar projected thusly: “That the effective defense of Alaska is of paramount importance to the defense of the continent from the west since Alaska is most exposed to an attempt by the enemy to establish a foothold in North American….That sea communications with Alaska in the future may be subject to serious interruption by enemy sea or air action. That the air route to Alaska and the defense facilities in Alaska cannot be fully utilized without adequate means of supply, for the air route, this can be best provided by a highway along this route.”

The need was apparent, the route was still contested. In all there were four routes considered; route A along the coast; route B following the Rocky Mountain Trench; route C inland; and route D, which followed the Mackenzie River System. Of all routes, the route C was the most difficult to cut and critics believed it would take the longest to forge through uncharted wilderness. But, the Army liked route C because it was a direct line to the newly constructed air bases.

The United States brokered a deal with Canada that allowed a highway through Canadian wilderness.




AlCan Highway 1942


Even though the Canadian Government had no objections to the route through Canada, they would not grant funds for the highway, and insisted that after the war the road would be turned over to Canada. The Army Corps of Engineers started work on the highway in late spring of 1942. It was not an easy engineering feat for the Army to construct a highway through 1522 miles of rugged unmapped wilderness.



Some compared the construction of the highway with the building of the Panama Canal and Hoover Dam. It was especially difficult to build the road considering that Army manpower for such projects was scarce. But, there was an untapped pool of men in the army’s black Corps of Engineers; The Army sent the 93rd, 95th , 97th and 388th units, trained in Alabama, Florida and Georgia, to help construct the highway. Of the 10,670 men, military and civilian who worked on the highway, 3, 695 of Army Troops were African-American.






At the beginning of armed conflict in Europe and the Pacific, African Americans in the U.S. Military were not allowed to serve on active duty. But, after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, a lack of manpower in the army started to change the prevailing view of African American’s role in the United States armed forces. But, perhaps the attack by the Japanese at Midway Island, and the attack at Dutch Harbor in June 1942 in Alaska’s Aleutians Islands (the only battle in the Pacific War that was fought in North America ) brought home the necessity for all Americans to work along side one another for a common goal to defeat the enemy.

It took 8 months to build the Alaska-Canadian Highway. Construction began in the late Spring of 1942. The work was difficult if for no other reason than the wilderness terrain and the adverse weather condition. Memories of African-Americans mentioned the harsh living conditions in the very cold winter. They had to fight against frostbite and hoped to survive wading chest deep in freezing cold lakes to build bridges.


95th

During the winter months, the temperature dropped to -70 degrees. One veteran remembered. “ For months on end, I couldn’t get a real night’s sleep. I had nightmares I was freezing to death.”




"We wore three pairs of socks at times, with rubber galoshes instead of shoes, because the leather would freeze. We had adequate clothing-- lined parkas, pants, mittens and heavy underwear, but it was still might cold. But I was a young man who felt he had a job to do, and I did it."
-Alexander Powel, Crane Operator, 97th Engineers



The troops lived in temporary tent camps in an environment where temps could easily go to 40 below zero. Their mess facilities were out of doors and food was served up in mess kits that some suggested were “slightly improved from the Civil War.”




Their tents were equipped with wood stoves, wood they cut by hand with cross cut saws and double-bitted axes. These same axes were used to clear the highway path while bulldozers pushed stumps out of the way. Timber that they cleared was also used to make bridges and culverts.

The Alaska Canadian Highway took eight months to complete. Proponents of the highways believed it was the single most engineering feat of World War Two. The highway was immediately used as the intended supply line to air bases in Nome and Fairbanks. In all, 7000 planes were delivered to Alaska. All along the route, every 300 miles, the service men built gravel run ways for planes to refuel and continue their trek to Russia and the European Allies.

Building of the AlCan highway was more than an engineering feat; it brought together black and white soldiers who worked outside segregation for a common goal of duty and the protection of the United States of America.

The Army completed the AlCan Highway on November 20, 1942. Construction crews worked from both ends of the Highway and met at what is now called "Soldier's Summit" at Kluane Lake in Yukon Territory.


Kluane Lake
Henry George Glyde
Canadian (1906-1998)
Kluane Lake on Alaska Highway, 1949
oil on canvas
Glenbow Museum Collection

In 1948, the Alaska-Canadian Highway was opened to the public. The rough gravel road was paved in the 1990s


Today’s Highway

Play That One Again, Eli

Note: Bob Foster is a frequent guest author on Western Americana Blog. His last article , "Yuma Territorial Prison 1875-1909" appeared in June, 2010. Bob’s following article is an interesting side of Mormon history that provides insight into some cultural aspects of Mormon country in which Bob’s family lived since early settlement in 1852. I hope readers enjoy this piece as much as I did….SUE

Wild, foot-stomping Barney music came to the remote silver mining town of Pioche, Nevada, around the turn of the century, in a rather round about fashion. Barney musical talent crossed the plains from Illinois in 1852, in the person of my maternal Great Grandfather, Benjamin Franklin Barney.

Twenty years old, married, with two small children, he and his wife stopped their wagon alongside a muddy Iowa trail for a brief moment to bury one of their babies who died of fever, then pressed on another thousand miles to the safety of the towering Rocky Mountains of Utah.

Benjamin could sing and play the push button accordion, the fiddle and guitar. At night, around the campfire, musicians in the wagon train would take out their fiddles, guitars, banjos, harmonicas and accordions and play some rousing tunes.


People from all over camp quickly gathered about, the fatigue of the long, grueling day on the rough trail slowly fading away as the lively music enveloped them.


Hands clapped and feet thumped as Great Grandpa called out "Old Dan Tucker”-- talking, laughter, mingling together, many dancing. The music had wings to it. Bow to your partner and doe-se-doe and swing. The stars smiling, the night crowding in, the wild mountain music with the high beat of the heart in it, the feet moving of themselves on the prairie grass.

"Play that one again, Benjamin," someone would holler. Benjamin lined up a Mormon Quadrille, in which the man leads out with two partners. The music starts, the dancers whirl. Then followed a square dance, the moves being called out in cadence by Great Grandpa.

Music was a Mormon tradition and was pushed along by talented musicians, whether on the vast rolling plains of Iowa and Nebraska or in the beautiful Social Hall in Great Salt Lake City. Brass bands, choirs, solos and playing musical instruments were the major forms of musical art in early Utah. In the 1860's tastes in music were improved by immigrants from England.

Benjamin settled in remote Elsinore, Utah,



Elsinore is about one hundred fifty five miles south of Salt Lake City, and raised a very large family, passing on his musical talents to several of his sons, some of whom formed a western band. His son Elias, my Grandfather, never had a music lesson, but he learned to play the fiddle, the push button accordion, guitar, banjo, and harmonica.

Whenever word spread that the Barney Brothers would be playing on Saturday night people came from miles around for a good old rip-snortin' night of music and dancing. But there wasn't much money to be generated from those poor country folk. By the time the four brothers divided up the take for the evening it was almost the same as playing for free.

At one of those shin-digs Elias ran into some gold miners from Kimberly,








a wild, rowdy gold camp high in the Tushar Mountains of Piute County, just twenty five miles south of Elsinore. "Hell, Elias," one miner told him, "you could make more off'n your music up in them Kimberly saloons in one night than playing at Church socials or dances down here in a year!""I'd never even thought of that!" Grandpa said. So he and his brothers sought the counsel of their religious father, Benjamin, asking what he thought about them playing in saloons. "No, absolutely not! You're not going into those dens of iniquity, full of sin, lashed by the tempests of lust and passion!" he growled.

But the boys were free spirits, not given much to religion, nor advice from their father for that matter, so they loaded their instruments in a wagon, pointed the team south, and headed up the mountain to Kimberly, 9500 feet above sea level.



Their band was an instant hit in the gold camp, sometimes playing all night in saloons, stores, and even in cabins with wooden floors. Folks in Kimberly were happy for any kind of music and especially loved some of the old tunes like Old Zip Coon, Bonnie Doon and Turkey in the Straw; and they absolutely loved fiddle music. One elderly woman told Elias, "you fellers sure can play them fiddles. Some fiddlers come up here last year and they sounded just like a bunch of bees in a beer bottle!"

Grandpa grinned as he told it. "When them miners get liquored up, they were mighty free spenders, I can tell you! We'd often make over a hundred dollars on a Saturday night. But sometimes they'd get mean and want to fight. I'd accommodate them, always betting on the outcome--me of course! I never met a drunk man I couldn't whip with my fists, out wrestle or outdraw with a gun!" I believed him, too, because he was six feet tall, one hundred eighty five pounds of pure grit and muscle, with sandy red hair, big hands--and a gunsmith in his spare time!

One cold, fall night Grandpa stopped at a saloon in Kimberly for three fingers of whiskey and ran into some miners from Pioche, Nevada, a much larger camp than Kimberly, who told him Barney music would fit right in with that rowdy Pioche crowd. After hearing how many saloons Pioche laid claim to and learning of the wide open opportunities for talented musical entrepreneurs Grandpa and his brothers again packed the wagon with their musical instruments, some grub and blankets, and headed 250 miles southwest to find out what the legendary Nevada silver camp had to offer.




Grandpa Eli loved Pioche at first sight! Saloons glittered with their gaudy bars and fancy glasses, and many colored liquors, and thirsty men swilled the burning poison. He told me, "now that was my kind of town. If I wanted a hot whiskey toddy I could have it. If I wanted to sleep in til noon I could. I could come and go as I pleased, free from all fashions and social conventions of society." About half the community were thieves, scoundrels and murderers, while the other half were the best folks in the world. Among them, he said, our lives and property were as safe as they were back in Utah. But Grandpa found more excitement among the scoundrels and thieves! And they all loved Barney music!





Grandpa could walk into any saloon in town--tell them who he was, and he and his brothers had a job playing music if they wanted it. So they played their wild, western style of music in many of Pioche's smokey saloons. Where they'd made a hundred dollars on a good night in Kimberly they could make from $300 to $500 on a good Saturday night in Pioche, not so much for their fine music, but because of the miners' state of complete inebriation!

At one of the larger dens of iniquity, I believe Grandpa called it the Edwards Saloon, around midnight when the miners and the Barney boys were well liquored up, they would really cut loose with that wild mountain music the miners could stomp their boots to. Drunk or sober, those four brothers could make their instruments talk! At the conclusion of a savage, stompin' dance hall tune the miners would shout, clap, and toss gold coins onto the stage shouting and hollering, "Play that one again, Eli!"


Those golden coins were most interesting. A $20 gold piece was about as large as today's silver dollar; the $10 gold piece about the size of today's 50 cent piece; and the $2.50 gold piece about the size of today's dime. There were also three different $1 gold coins in circulation. The Barneys had to keep a sharp eye out to see where some of those smaller coins rolled. Grandpa was often surprised at the number of $20 gold pieces they gathered up after a performance. There was also a $3 gold piece, about the size of today's nickel. If you happen to find one, get to a coin dealer fast; for they are very rare and extremely valuable!

Once in a while the Barney Brothers would slow the tempo, playing a sad, nostalgic piece, sometimes harmonizing and singing the sad, lonesome words of love, life, hard times and death. Miners ceased talking as the music filled an empty void, and they each contemplated their difficult, laborious lives, working grueling ten-hour shifts, deep in dark, dangerous underground tunnels, trying to make enough money to support a wife and kids, vainly hoping to save enough of a grub stake to transfer to something better for them and their families, many knowing full well they were trapped in a situation they could never get out of.

Grandpa said a Paiute Indian led a Mormon missionary, William Hamblin, to a large silver deposit in the vicinity of Pioche in 1864. But because of Indian troubles and technical difficulties in reducing the ore nothing much happened. By 1869 several men, including San Francisco entrepreneur Francois L.A. Pioche, who never visited Pioche, though the town was named after him, purchased property in the area and formed the Meadow Valley Mining Company. In 1870 they successfully separated the silver from the ore using chemical processing, thereby opening the area to a flurry mining activity; and Pioche was born.







Though leery of lawmen the Barneys knew it was in their best interests to obtain the blessing of local law enforcement officials before they played any music or gambled. In the West, in those days, especially in Nevada, lawmen got a cut of any revenue made by anyone in the saloon business. A saloon owner in Pioche told Grandpa the Sheriff's office in the 1870's was worth $40,000 a year in bribes alone. If a sheriff turned in an expense account of $15,000 for a 200-mile trip it was paid without question. The saloon owner also told him of a deputy sheriff who killed three desperados on three different street corners within seconds.

Most of the violence in Pioche resulted from questions concerning the exact location of mining claims and the presence of ore-chutes that extended through a series of claims. There was great temptation to "jump" other miners' claims or dispute them in court. To protect their claims mine owners formed vigilance committees, then finally resorted to hiring guards, professional toughs and gunmen, at $20 a day. Sometimes twenty thugs were hired in one day, and they used brute force against claim jumpers.


Pioche Jail

Elias Barney enjoyed living in the wild environment created by tough lawmen and outlaws. Being quite young he was independent, untidy and hard living. He seriously thought about settling down in Pioche but was unable to find a good woman to marry. I'm sure he could have if he'd played at Church socials instead of in saloons! But I never dared say it to his face!

When the Barney Brothers arrived in Pioche at the turn of the century to introduce their particular brand of music, the town was partially civilized, slightly tamer than it was in the 1870's and 80's. From it's start its official start in 1870 the town grew rapidly until 1873, when its population peaked at 10,000. During that boom period, there were seventy two saloons, three hurdie-gurdies, two breweries, and two daily newspapers with wire service. Guns were the only law and Pioche made Bodie, Tombstone and other wild western towns pale in comparison. That became evident to Grandpa when he visited Pioche's famous "Boot Hill Cemetery" where many rows of gunshot and knifing victims lay buried under wooden markers.

Like all young men, Grandpa enjoyed visiting with the old timers in Pioche who all claimed that seventy five men died violently before anyone died of natural causes! Most had witnessed gun fights in the streets, and saw lawmen and outlaws come and go, many exhibiting their expert skills as gunfighters.

After spending some very interesting and memorable months in Pioche, Elias Barney returned to Elsinore, Utah, to become the farmer and rancher his father always wanted him to be. But it was tough to return to the sedate life of a rural Utah farmer, after sampling the excitement of Pioche's noisy, smokey saloons. There wasn't a good old smelly saloon within a five day's ride in any direction from that central Utah town. So he settled down, bought some land and married a lovely young lady, Jane Green, from Parowan, Utah, on January 31, 1901. They were married for sixty years, until Jane died in 1961. They had eleven children, all of whom lived to adulthood, married and gave Elias and Jane 37 grandchildren and 105 great grandchildren

Grandpa Eli's musical talent was passed on to some of his children, with whom he formed a band. They played Barney music at dances, church socials, and other functions in the Elsinore area. Grandpa usually played his push button accordion or the fiddle. His son Larcell (Lars) played guitar and banjo, daughter Wanda played piano accordion, and daughter Betty played guitar.

During the 1950's Elias' family band sometimes played on Saturday afternoons on radio station KSVC in Richfield, Utah, the County Seat of Sevier County. Grandpa Barney's brothers also passed on musical talents to some of their children, and those nieces and nephews often played with the Elias Barney group.

In the 1960's, when Grandpa Elias was in his late eighties, living alone on the old homestead, I'd stop by from time to time to see how he was getting along.

He'd always ask, "did I ever tell you about the time me and my brothers played over in the Pioche saloons, and them drunken miners would throw twenty-dollar gold pieces on the stage and holler, 'play that one again, Eli?'"

Though I'd heard his Pioche tale many times, out of courtesy I'd always say, "no, Grandpa, why don't you tell me about it?"

His face beamed and his eyes sparkled as he lit into a tale of the old west and his particular part in it. I sat quietly, looking up at the old double-barreled shotgun on pegs in the wall, a memento of those exciting days, Grandpa's "other life," as he called that long ago time.

When he finished his tale he'd ask, "would you like me to play you a tune?" He was already opening the battered old accordion case. Out came the old push button accordion and I watched his knurled, aged fingers, now severely crippled by arthritis, try to find those tiny button keys. Grandpa closed his eyes, as if remembering pleasant memories from long ago, squeezed the old squeeze box, tapping his toe on the floor, keeping time with the music. He made a few mistakes, sometimes pushing two buttons at a time. Music filled the room.


Finishing his rendition of the Yellow Rose of Texas, and shaking his head sadly, he placed the instrument back in its case, and apologized. "I ain't near as good as when I was young."

A nostalgic look crept into his gray eyes and he smiled at me. "Ah Bobbie Boy. What grand times those were! I sure wish you could have been there in Pioche to share them with me and my brothers.”

Me too, Grandpa!

The End




References

Personal recollections of Robert L. Foster as told to him by his Grandfather, Elias Barney

Pamphlets and other interesting Pioche literature, furnished by Peggy Draper, Head librarian, Lincoln County Public Library, Pioche, NV.

Some Dreams Die, Frisco: by George A. Thompson, P. 128: Dream Garden Press, Salt Lake City, UT, 1982

Utah's Heritage, by S. George Ellsworth, pp.166-236-237: Perigrine Books, Salt Lake City, UT

Mormon Country, by Wallace Stegner, P. 13: University of Nebraska Press


An Enduring Legacy by Daughters of Utah Pioneers, Volume 12, 1989
Ghost Towns of Nevada by Donald C. Miller, pp.104-107: Pruett Publishing Co. Boulder, CO, 1979