Well, I'm back home after a month in Greece with the City Weekly Greece Trip 2023 (now taking applications for 2024, btw). The first thing I noticed were the hard-to-miss extraordinary fall colors we are experiencing this year. So, I took a ride up Butterfield Canyon this past weekend to take a look.
Not many folks in Salt Lake Valley have even a clue where Butterfield Canyon is. But for those of us who grew up on the south and west ends of the valley—or in the Oquirrh Mountains themselves, like I did, in Bingham Canyon—Butterfield Canyon was our not-so-secret kegger getaway. It was mostly a dirt road back then from just past what used to be the Nicoletti property (where they raised sheep and goats and kept the Italians and Greeks of the area in full supply of cheese) all the way over the pass at the top where the road connects to Middle Canyon on the Tooele County side.
At the pass, you could continue up to the top of Sunshine Peak or head down Middle Canyon and into Tooele. Today, some people drive up and make it their base to hike to the taller peaks of the Oquirrh Mountains.
Although I grew up in the Oquirrh Mountains, steep and craggy as they were, I can only think of a handful of times I walked out the door to intentionally take a hike. My hikes were often of the type that included bringing home chokecherries or elderberries for my jam-making grandmother. I don't understand the attraction of hiking for the hell of it.
We did, however, ride our bikes all over the hills for recreation. I don't think I'd last three minutes today on any bike trail that has more than a 2% grade, but back then we rode them everywhere—even the kids who had Sting-Ray handlebars. None of us had more than three gears, and I can only think of one kid who had hand brakes. If you have never had your foot kicked off a pedal brake going downhill like a bat out of hell without a trail, you can't call yourself a mountain biker.
We predated the mountain biking explosion by at least 20 years. We were pretty good, especially given our equipment. Alas, we were the sons and grandsons of miners and by damn, miners we shall be. And nearly to a person, we were, if even for just one summer or three, working as supplemental help on track gangs composed of all those sons in order to pay for a college education.
I worked alongside future doctors, lawyers, dentists, accountants, salesmen, educators, businessmen and pool sharks. We were mostly all from Bingham Canyon. We all believed our small corner of the canyon was the best small corner, be it Lead Mine (my home), Copperton, Carr Fork, Frogtown, Copperfield (which lent its name to the parent company of this newspaper), Highland Boy, Dinkeyville, Heaston Heights, Freeman, Markham Gulch or even Lark, which wasn't in the canyon, but was still regarded as a part of our little world.
All of our small corners were shaped by the growing open-pit mine that we worked inside. Little by little, day by day, our work not only sent copper and other ores to the Magna smelters, but also overburden and waste rock to the dumps that mostly faced the Salt Lake Valley. We dug away our own homes.
Bingham Canyon proper is buried under hundreds of feet of waste rock. Thus, I can't see my favorite old haunts. The dumps above Copperton and Lark are growing ever higher—the old crags and gullies of the east-facing Oquirrh Mountains have been replaced by mine dumps that are not only growing horizontally (to where the property lines end) but vertically, too, as overburden from the pit is stacked higher and wider. They say you can see the mine from outer space. Big deal.
Only two things can happen now: Those dumps will grow to set new Oquirrh Mountain elevation levels or, one day, it will rain like all hell broke loose, and the whole sumbitch will come slagging down, burying Copperton and half the Salt Lake Valley for good measure.
In Greece, our group drove through Thessaly just a week after the region got two years' worth of rain dumped on it in just 48 hours. Imagine Salt Lake and Utah counties with a 4-foot-deep puddle. When I drove into Butterfield Canyon to see the colors, the lurking mine dumps were an imposition impossible to ignore.
When I was a kid riding my bike in the Oquirrhs, I remember seeing a pipe burst above a dump, washing tons of material down to nearly the canyon floor not very far from Lead Mine.
At nearly the same time, we future miners learned of a terrible mine dump disaster at Aberfan, England, that killed 144 people, mostly kids. At Aberfan, a flawed holding dam burst that then swept the muck into the village.
There's no dam atop the Oquirrh Mountains. But I did see the carnage in Greece resulting from a once-in-1,000-years storm. I'm not so sure those Kennecott dumps are going to stay in place if 2 feet of rain falls on them in 24 hours, as it did in Thessaly. I'd bet against them staying put.
You never know—we could be in year 999 of that 1,000-year storm that will one day park its ass on those mine dumps. So, if I were you, I'd buy my next home with a mountain view of greenery, not of the pee-colored dumps that will become your backyard.
Send comments to john@cityweekly.net
