In the Escalante Desert of Iron County, UT, Lund sits alone and largely forgotten along the Union Pacific Railroad line. Once a mecca to tourists arriving by rail, and before that, to homesteaders eager to try their luck dry- farming, today a few buildings still stand to mark the former community of almost 200 people.
The highways that radiated from Lund to Cedar City and Parowan made the town a central corridor for the transport of alcohol into Southwest Utah towns, and the presence of a railroad provided the area with colorful characters and motivations most rural agricultural communities of the day were unable to appreciate. In its time Lund was a rather exciting place, with numerous robberies, murders, and tragic deaths occurring over the years. In 1922 the entire town was inundated to a depth of four feet by an apocalyptic flood from rapidly melting snow. Water, Fire, and Firewater proved as dramatic as any human factors in the exciting, and oft tragic, history of the forgotten town.
Below are a few excerpts from a chapter on Lund I wrote this week:
Fire and Fire Water Take a Toll
Lund's reputation was unfortunately tarnished early one morning in May 1911 when an employee of The Corry Brothers' stage company decided to take one of the vehicles out for a joy ride in what would become one of Iron County's first drunk driving accidents. The unnamed driver had spent his Saturday afternoon and evening drinking fortifying quantities of alcohol, and in the course of his evening was joined in his activities by a Daniel Dix of Cedar City, a Mr. O'Donald who was the Lund railway station attendant, and two unidentified Mexican men. Evidently festivities continued unabated until 3 or 4 AM, at which point the gentlemen decided to take an automobile for a ride across the desert flats until time for breakfast. All this of course was strictly in violation the Corrys' policies.
While attempting to take a turn at high speed the vehicle crashed mightily, instantly killing the two Mexicans, crushing Mr. O'Donald, as well as injuring Dix and the driver. O'Donald was transported to Salt Lake City with five broken ribs, a broken leg, and internal injuries, while Dix was taken to Cedar City where he lay in a comatose state for several days. The two Mexicans, whose names the Iron County Record never bothered to ascertain, were buried without coffins in two holes dug into the desert by their countrymen. O'Donald would be missed during his lengthy recuperation, though it was unfortunate for the railroad they were able to replace him with an equally responsible man. In September the new station attendant Mr. Sheppard left with a ticket for Milford saying he would be back the next morning. To the railway's consternation he neither returned the next day nor any day after, and greatly missed was $1400 of express money that had previously been entrusted to his care.
Unfortunately this was not to be the last of Lund's automobiles violently destroyed within a year and a half. In August 1912 driver B. F. Knell was in his garage servicing an automobile he operated between Cedar City and Lund. As months had passed innumerable drips of gasoline and oil had soaked into the ground, and as Mr. Knell moved about the place his shoe collided with a dropped and long forgotten match in such a way as to ignite a spark which quickly caught the ground afire. The efforts of Mr. Knell were insufficient to prevent its spread, and soon a can of oily rags was alight and Knell himself was crawling for his life out the smoke filled building. Shortly after his escape a forty gallon barrel of gasoline and an adjacent drum of oil caught fire and blew up, taking with them what was left of the automobile.
The growing community of Lund might have had much more difficult beginning were not several men in town in anticipation of the morning's train. Working together they were able to contain the flames, which lapped menacingly at Mr. Root's hotel as well as the store of J. David Leigh.
As if by design, the threat of fire had not long abated before it returned with a vengeance to claim a victim it had been denied. Mrs. Pace, the foster mother of Mrs. Root was partially invalid and living with the family at Lund. For the sake of her mature age and disability she had her own quiet room in a separate building than that occupied by the rest of the Roots. Just two months after the garage burned, Mrs. Root had not long left her side to prepare dinner for her when the cry of fire was again sounded. Apparently the very quilts that had just been adjusted to keep her warm had gotten too near a stove that was left on for its heat. Mrs. Pace was unable to be saved and was speculated to have died by a combination of burns and suffocation. She was soon after taken to New Harmony for burial.
The deeply tragic events of her death elicited great sorrow from among Lund's residents. Undeterred, the tenacious Mrs. Root continued to live in Lund and run the hotel until January 1920 when she leased its operation to two women from Cedar City. After this reprieve, she returned again to work for several more years.
In consideration of the above sensational facts so remarkable in their chronological proximity to one another, the author must not be allowed to leave an inaccurate reputation lingering upon the name of the Corrys. Apparently it was much more than passengers that the able driver was so interested in transporting between Lund and Cedar City. In the later town, "the frequency of intoxicated persons" so inflamed local option that an extra-legal body composed of sober citizens assembled itself for the purposes of intimidating the area's known and suspected providers of spirited beverage. Corry was among those approached and instructed to cease in his transport of alcohol. Apparently the stage driver refused to be intimidated, and a week later the sheriff had succeeded in intercepting a shipment of hard alcohol over his company's route.
By August arrests were being made in Lund in an attempt to stop the trafficking through that town. In 1917 Andrew Corry was finally caught red handed with a dozen pints of whiskey and six bottles of beer by sheriff Joseph Fife. From Lund he was taken to Cedar City where he was unsympathetically delivered a $75 fine by that city's Justice of the Peace. There traffic on Main Street briefly came to a halt while the people of that town observed the seized contents being opened and poured out on the road as a warning to all.
Perhaps the most notorious unrepentant bootlegger in Lund was Ollie Norris, operator of the Lund garage for at least thirteen years between 1923 and 1936. After a long period of suspicion, Norris was first arrested by Sheriff Leigh for the violation of prohibition laws in May 1926. After losing on appeal he was found guilty of two charges and sentenced to 60 days in jail and a $250 fine. In September he was caught again in possession of alcohol and brought to trial once more, though he may have succeeded in getting this case dismissed. Unrepentant, In November 1927 a pair of undercover agents purchased from Norris a gallon and two quarts of liquor before informing him of their true identity and placing him under arrest once more.
Two years later Norris was again arrested. This time a partner and himself were caught with 48 pints of moonshine between them. By then he was being written of publicly as a "persistent violator." This did not change the fact that the the logic of prohibition continued to trouble Norris in its rationality. In March 1930, agents scrutinizing his home found inside a flask of spirits and a bottle of beer. Buried outside, just in front of a small outhouse was located a 10 gallon keg containing 3 to 4 gallons of alcohol.
Just a few days before going on trail for this offense an unknown person broke into the Parowan jail where the evidence was being held. After prying open the door, the invader removed the moonshine from Norris' keg and flask and replaced its contents water and tea. For good measure, a second keg waiting next to it for use in another case was drained and refilled with water as well. Days later, against the testimony of federal officers a jury found Norris "Not Guilty." The subsequent fulminations of the Iron County Times accomplished little to change the sentiment that kept the Lund garage owner a free man.
After "an unusually long interval of silence concerning him," Norris was back in the spotlight in September 1932. This time he was driving along the Cedar City - Lund Highway when he lost control of his car and overturned it, breaking three of his ribs and injuring two women in the car with him. Alcohol was probably a factor, and agents surveying the scene hid in darkness until the husbands of the two women he had been driving with with returned to dig up a keg of moonshine, suspected to have been hastily hidden after the wreck. Oddly, no subsequent trial or conviction was reported.
One would hope that this accident would have finally convinced Norris to moderate his use and sale of hard drink, but most likely the repeal of prohibition in December 1933 was most responsible for keeping him out of subsequent headlines and restoring him to respectability. In a 1935 bond election Norris was one of the Lund election conductors, and in 1936 he was Lund's representative to the State Convention of the Democratic Party.
