Oral History Program Herbert Wood Interviewed by Robert Borgeson 11 March 1973 i Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Herbert Wood Interviewed by Robert Borgeson 11 March 1973 Copyright © 2014 by Weber State University, Stewart Library ii Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. The reviewed and corrected transcripts are indexed, printed, and bound with photographs and illustrative materials as available. Archival copies are placed in University Archives. The Stewart Library also houses the original recording so researchers can gain a sense of the interviewee's voice and intonations. Project Description The Weber State College/University Student Projects have been created by students working with several different professors on the Weber State campus. The topics are varied and based on the student's interest or task for a specific assignment. These oral history assignments were created to help Weber State students learn the value and importance of recording public history and to benefit the expansion of the Weber State oral history collections. ____________________________________ Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed Kelley Evans, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account. It reflects personal opinion offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ____________________________________ Rights Management All literary rights in the manuscript, including the right to publish, are reserved to the Stewart Library of Weber State University. No part of the manuscript may be published without the written permission of the University Librarian. Requests for permission to publish should be addressed to the Administration Office, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, Utah, 84408. The request should include identification of the specific item and identification of the user. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Wood, Herbert, an oral history by Robert Borgeson, 11 March 1973, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Abstract: The following is a summary of an oral history interview with Herbert Wood. The interview was conducted on March 11, 1973, by Robert Borgeson, in Clearfield, Utah. The summary covers Herbert’s life and where he worked during his life. I interviewed Mr. Herbert Wood. He told me he was born in Cedar Falls, Iowa lived there until 1911. He was graduated from Cedar Falls High School in 1904. He moved to Utah in November 1911. He told me he came to Utah under a project that originated in his community after Congress set aside a portion of the Escalante Valley for homesteads. Each homestead was to have 320 acres. You didn't have to live on the homestead but you did have to make certain improvements in a certain number of years. He came to Utah with others to look the territory over. He liked the homesteads and thought the soil looked good. The sage brush was as high as a horse’s back. He found irrigation water available within sixty or seventy feet and thought it looked promising. He went back to Iowa and when they came back to Utah, a top Mormon official had influenced Senator Smoot and he had the land withdrawn from the proposal, so that 1 changed the whole aspect of filing claims for a homestead. He moved up to Box Elder County. He found the land there not desirable for homesteading. There was lots of alkali in the desert land. He then moved to Provo from 1912 to 1913. The Government Bureau opened up tracts of land in the Uinta Basin. It was Indian land. Mr. Woods went on a survey trip and examined the land. He made topographical sketches of it. He examined thousands of acres and bought quite a bit of it at auctions. The land sold for $1.25 to $2.00 per acre. After he bought land other people wanted him to furnish topographical drawings for them before they bought land for themselves. He acted as an attorney and bought several thousand acres for them. He then went to Salt Lake City and worked for Utah Gas and Coke Company. At that time coke was used widely for heating. In 1915 he moved to a ranch in Duchesne which was a part of Wasatch County at that time. Later he opened up land for a farm on the river bottom there. He lived there until World War I. 2 He had quite a bit of livestock and thought the war was going to be very serious. He decided his wife and baby could not take care of the farm with him gone so he sold his farm in 1917 when war was declared. He then moved to Carbon County and went into the mining business. He was a mining foreman for 28 years. He had a severe heart attack and had to quit the mining business. I asked him if the Mormons had ever given him any problems. He said they never bothered him in any way. He always got along well with them. In 1945 he moved to Clearfield. He became active in the city and was the first non-Mormon to serve on the city council. He served three terms as a councilman. He was also a director in Davis County. I asked him if safety conditions in the mines had changed much. He said some conditions had changed. The regulations were much better and more developed. They used carbide lights and before those they used candles. After an explosion at Castle Gate, Utah, Congress passed a law that all mining lights must be battery powered. 3 I asked him how the town of Price changed in the years he was there. He said the town grew quite a bit because it was the center of the coal industry. He worked for the Liberty Fuel Company for a few years but most of the time he worked for the Liberty Mines. He also worked for a larger company in Standardsville in Spring Canyon. He moved to Standardsville because the mine produced a bigger tonnage and he had a chance to be an outside foreman and make more money. He said lots of races worked in the mines and mentioned Japanese and Mexicans as well as whites. I asked him about Davis County when he moved here. He told me there were about 30,000 people in 1945 and today there are over 100,000. The only through roads were Highway 91 and the Mountain Road. The Rio Grande and Southern Pacific Railroad ran into Ogden. The Bamberger Line ran between Ogden and Salt Lake. There were no electric lights on the streets of Clearfield. He went after Utah Power and Light Company and tried to get them put in. Finally they sent an assistant manager to look the situation 4 over and he informed me he would try to get street lights, he went to the Governor to get traffic lights in Clearfield. I found Mr. Wood to be a very alert and interesting gentleman of eighty-five years of age. He is hard of hearing but was willing to share his life experiences with me. 5