Friday, February 8, 2013

Who Killed Sarah Jane Kilkausky?

Something that came out of my research on the Fish Springs mining camp is a riddle of a few alleged murders. One in fact did occur, and my attempt to unravel it is frustrated by my inability to confirm two alleged murders that proceeded it and may have been connected, but which seem to have vanished from the historical record. There was, however, a mysterious lover, a jealous husband, a shooting, a saloon, and a dead body found in the bottom of a mine.

While mysteries remain about exactly what happened at Fish Springs in the summer of 1907, I have been able to unravel much of it. Click to read, Who Killed Sarah Jane Kilkausky?

Special thanks is due to Ken Puchlik, a geology consultant currently employed by Lithic Resources, which is planning to develop a large Zinc deposit near the site of historic mining in the Fish Springs Range. Not only did he facilitate a visit and my photography of the area, but we had a useful interview and he provided me with several interesting, though undated, photographs from the era of historic mining at Fish Springs (1891-1914). Thanks is also due to the Special Collections Dept at BYU's library, who send me a transcript of an invaluable interview conducted with a former resident of the area.