“Mining Stock Stirs » Memories of 189 By Bob Agee ~ Recent discussions of La Plata, the brief but gaudy silver boom town 40 miles northeast of Ogden Eva Mrs. to memories brought. oe: Peterson Hardy of 341 BANG Mrs. Hardy is a student of area history and has collected many clippings, booklets and other data about Ogden Valley and Huntsville. One of her prized possessions is a certificate for 5,000 shares of the Red Jacket Mining & Milling Co., of La Plata, Cache County, Utah. The certificate is dated April 21, 1892, and one of the signatures on it is that of Adam Peterson, her father. Mrs. Hardy was born in Huriteville in 1889 and for a time her father and mother ran a general store and hotel in the valley community. They were thus in on “‘the ground floor’? when a sheepherder in the road that wound down the ae to Ogden. There are many the story McKay, LDS of La Plata. beloved Church, David patriarch delivered newspapers to was picked 18. He famed names in Huntsville and La the mail Plata and when he| up the mail in | carried by horseback. Ernest McKay, County treasurer, of O. it 25 former and his miles | Weber | brother Angus, worked in the mines. ENDED IN 1897 ~The mines produced a rich return in galena ore, containing lead and silver, but the life of the town was| short. The veins in the Lurretta, Mountain Boy and Yellow and Red} Jacket mines petered out by the fall of 1897. During its brief history La Plata had a bank, post office, barber shop and of course the typical gambling halls and saloons. wild upper reaches of the Beaver picked up a rock that seemed too The mine shafts were driven! heavy for its size. He showed it to straight into the steep hillsides. his foreman, who knew silver when Miners lived in a big two-storied | he saw .it. ‘|rooming house and paid $3 a day 1,500 PEOPLE for their room. They fed them. The date was in August, 1891, and when the news of the strike was ‘| heard about 1,500 men, women and children left their homes and businesses in Utah cities and headed for the hills. It was Ogden a long all-day trip from to the mines, and many of selves. The town acquired a newspaper, the “Special Courier,” that flourished briefly. A stageline was put into service with travelers. bouncing and jouncing the 40 miles to Ogden at peril ‘Although of spine and skull. ) La Plata’s story <was|$ the travelers broke the journey brief, it was rich. Some of the._OF Q; 4 with a stay at Huntsville where taken out of the hills covered \Me they paid Mr. and Mrs. Peterson aspen and pine assayed as much’) 25 cents for a night’s lodging and as $1,700 a ton. p22 cents for each meal. Now La Plata is nearly extinet ; Sad in Sal Eva Peterson, as a_ 6-year-old Only a few ramshackle buildinngs} | girl, recalls the heavy ore wagons remain and the road which ‘was| I: lled by several teams as_ they once busy with stagecoaches, ore. Hee. n e creaking down the Beaver wagons and horsebackers on the jand out of South Fork to Hunts- way to get rich, is overgrown w | In “Huntsville the ore was loaded onto cars of the single-track rail- brush, filled with rocks and bot wid. ers and scarcely in shape for the | | family automobile.