Ken Sanders is not one to make a big fuss. Still, a golden anniversary is no small accomplishment in any profession.

"I created and co-owned Cosmic Aeroplane Books and Records beginning in 1975," the veteran bookseller told City Weekly. "I have [now] run an open shop in Salt Lake City for 50 years."

Getting his first taste of the trade by "wheeling and dealing" comic books in grade school, Sanders formally entered the bookselling field with jobs at Sugar House's Central Book Exchange, the Collectors Book Store in Hollywood, California, and Sam Weller's Bookstore in Salt Lake City.

And after all this time, his love for the books and the people still remain his greatest enjoyments about the job. Indeed, they are what keep him going.

"You have to have an intellectual curiosity and the blessing of this business is you learn something new every single day," Sanders observed.

What's more, customers routinely thank him and his staff for their work in operating Ken Sanders Rare Books, now located within the Leonardo Museum downtown (209 E. 500 South).

"I'm grateful for that," he said of the compliments.

Sanders would be even more grateful if all such well-wishers bought something on the premises, rather than turning to online marketplaces. It costs money, after all, to hold and maintain a stock of cheap and medium-priced books on top of the rent and utilities involved with running his store.

"I would be way better off by downsizing to an online warehouse somewhere and selling only the expensive books," he admitted. "Will I be in business a year from now? I can't honestly tell you."

With all the risks and sacrifices involved, why does Sanders keep this unique space open? Why do any of our local booksellers, for that matter?

The perspectives will of course differ, but perhaps they share some kinship with what motivated Utah's very first known bookseller, James P. Dwyer (1831-1915).

"The older generation will not need to be told who James Dwyer is," remarked John Henry Evans for the Improvement Era back in June 1911. "For the other day I asked one of them, whom I merely happened to meet, whether he knew anything about Mr. Dwyer. 'Know anything about James Dwyer!' he exclaimed, 'I should think I do! Who doesn't?'"

Born in 1831 at Bansha, Tipperary County, Ireland, to Martin Dwyer and Catherine Powers, James Dwyer emigrated with his family first to Canada and then New York. Devoutly religious, Dwyer had initially prepared for ordination as a Catholic priest before being baptized as a Latter-day Saint in 1855.

A lover of books, in search of a direction for his life, and apparently a frequent sight at local shops, the young Dwyer reportedly commented one day to a New York bookdealer about the sorry state of the latter's establishment. Almost every evening, Dwyer related, he would hear customers ask for books that he knew to be on the shelves, but that shop clerks were unable to find.

"You have no system in the arrangement of your books," Dwyer reportedly said. "Now, if you'll lock me in here Saturday night, and let me stay here till Monday morning, I'll arrange these books so that you can find any book in ten seconds."

The offer was accepted, and the bookdealer was said to have been so pleased with Dwyer's organizational efforts that the young man was made head clerk on the spot.

"In one and the same moment," Evans wrote of the event, "he had found a good place and his life's work."

Crossing the west to join his fellow Mormons, Dwyer reached Salt Lake City in the early 1860s by ox team and married Sarah Ann Hammer (1843-1897) soon thereafter. They ultimately had eight children before Dwyer's subsequent marriage to Jane Thomson MacKenzie (1840-1924) following Hammer's death.

Opening a newsstand on the corner of West Temple and First South—roughly where the Salt Palace Convention Center stands today—Utah's first bookman had at last arrived.

"A Walking Compendium of Knowledge"
Bookselling dates as far back as the introduction of printing itself, but it was in the 19th century that the seeds of bookstores, as we know them today, began to develop.

"Our concept of a modern bookstore didn't really exist then," Ken Sanders explained. "Almost every early publisher was a bookseller out of necessity."

Sanders noted that the arrival of a printing press to the Salt Lake Valley in 1849 was an important start, but ongoing paper supply shortages throughout the 1850s complicated the production of newspapers and largely limited the publication of books—to say nothing of establishing places that specialized in selling them.

It wasn't until George Q. Cannon's commencement of the Cannon & Sons publishing company from his home in 1866 that Utah's book culture got a significant shot in the arm.

In those days, books were but one among many provisions that a local concern offered its public, as at Orson Hyde Elliott's (1842-1909) wholesale fruit shop, Charles Savage and George Ottinger's art emporium, John Kelly's (1824-1883) bindery and David O. Calder's (1823-1884) music store.

Such appears to have been the case with Dwyer's "Railroad News Depot" when it took up residence in the Old Constitution building near First South and Main Street, which, according to one 1865 notice, offered trout and seeds along with stationary and periodicals. From here, the enthusiastic Dwyer supplied Salt Lakers with newspapers, magazines, sheet music and literature as quickly as could be brought into the Territory.

"The Dwyer book store in those days was a busy scene just after the stage drove up," Evans recalled. "Long rows of boys with nimble fingers folded papers and passed them along to the seller. Usually also there was a long row of customers, stretching out of doors and along the street for half a block, as at the theatre window, each taking his turn."

Through Dwyer's auspices, local readers had a reliable source for their favorite reading materials, such as the New York Fireside Companion, Harper's Weekly, the Atlantic Monthly and the New York Ledger. But his shop was much more than merely a purveyor of print—it was a cultural and literary hub.

"[Dwyer's] shop was the center of news—the focus for village debates and discussions," historian Leonard Arrington once recounted to the Intermountain Booksellers Convention in 1982. "Dwyer himself was a walking compendium of knowledge on the contents of almost every book in his store. If he could not find time to read a book himself, he would make a gift of it to another person who, he hoped, would report back to him of its contents."

Indeed, Dwyer's passion for education manifested in many ways, often giving penniless students their books on credit. Touring Utah's rural areas with Superintendent of Schools Obadiah Riggs, Dwyer advocated for better teacher instruction.

He supported the Deseret Museum, the first of its kind in Utah, and also donated a portion of his stock to create a library at the old Territorial Prison. What is known today as Ensign College had its origins at Dwyer's Bookstore.

Lamp in the Window
When Dwyer's bookstore relocated to a new building in the early 1870s, just a couple doors south of its original spot, the unique literary atmosphere he had created flourished to an even greater extent.

"Books lined both walls and the rear; a sort of round table was established in the back room; and anybody who wished to do so might come in and read whatever book struck his fancy," Evans wrote of the store. "Here were all the school books used in the territory; here was the gathering place for the teaching profession; here were held the teachers' institutes, the back room being especially fitted up for the purpose with instruments, maps, and up-to-date things generally."

The Dwyers' rambling, nine-room stucco—which once stood at 166 W. North Temple—was likewise fondly remembered by contemporaries for the beauty of its gardens and the steady stream of scholars, performers and publishers who visited for banquets.

Operating his bookstore for more than 40 years before shifting activities to other fields, Dwyer left a lasting impression upon his children, with two members of the Dwyer clan even carrying on the bookshop tradition through Salt Lake's Walker Bros. and Auerbach stores. His eldest daughter, the actress Ada Dwyer Russell (1863-1952), was especially appreciative of her father's professional tutelage as well as his advocacy for LGBTQ individuals like herself, though such solicitude was not always well received by his peers.

"All the success I have made, I owe to my father," Russell said in December 1928, according to the Juvenile Instructor, "for he gave me every opportunity."

Beyond his own family, however, Dwyer had evidently made an impression upon countless Utahns with his educational and cultural labors. Some sought him out to thank him for what he gave them; it was something he especially savored near the end of his life.

"Day by day I meet some man or woman who tells me that I helped him or her to an education," he related to the Salt Lake Telegram in 1910. "If I have done this I have done some good to my fellow man and woman. I only wish that I could give good books to every boy and girl in the world."

When Dwyer died in 1915, local papers uniformly hailed the quiet and genial bookseller, but perhaps none articulated his legacy better than Goodwin's Weekly:

"He believed earnestly in the creed he had chosen, but he was not bigoted; he realized that men of all creeds and no creeds might be sincere, and he meant to be fair to all," the tribute exclaimed. "He established the first book store in Utah, and by the act he placed a lamp in the window, toward which all might turn for light."

Indeed, the names of those who subsequently maintained that lamplight here in Utah are legion: Harry (1863-1934) and Frank Margetts (1867-1948); Richard (1854-1934) and Emma Shepard (1870-1952); David "Dad" Callahan (1862-1933); William L. Morgan (1866-1944); Gustav Weller (1890-1971); N. Eugene Wilson (1902-1986); and Johann Bekker (1909-1978), to name only a few.

The Most Interesting People
Bookselling, as Samuel Weller (1921-2009) once opined, is "the greatest business that man ever conceived," a timeless caretaking work of safeguarding the knowledge of past civilizations for the hungry minds of the present and future.

"I think that if you are going to meet interesting people in this world, you're going to meet them in a bookstore," Weller added. "I've met some of the greatest, the neatest people that you have ever seen. I've met some of the biggest rat finks that ever walked the pike, too. But you can go anywhere and do that."

Weller's son is inclined to agree with such an assessment. Tony Weller—along with his wife Catherine—operates Weller Book Works out of Trolley Square, the store's fifth location since its start in 1929.

He said he could do without some of the headaches involved. But like so many other booksellers, Weller doesn't mind the stress if it means the continued intellectual stimulation and cultivation of curiosity that comes with the job.

"I meet very interesting people here," Tony Weller told City Weekly. "I think my soul would shrink rapidly if I didn't have this exposure on a regular basis."

Weller's store takes a generalist approach to its stock—"an athletic team with no obvious star"—rather than focusing on specialized topics or selling strictly used or new books, which has become a necessity for many independent bookstores since the 1990s. He likens the loss of a community generalist to a troubled "triage" scenario, which becomes hampered when important elements to social survival may or may not be discarded recklessly because no one involved knows enough to make the proper judgment call of what to preserve.

"I just hope that there will be other people who do this in the future," he added. "We hope we can train some people. It's a big grasp and it might not be the most profitable way to run a bookstore, but I've enjoyed it."

As has been the case for the last 30 years, Weller observed, survival has largely become the new success within the book trade, due to what he described as "the biggest antitrust violator in the country—Amazon—hanging over us like a dark cloud."

That being said, the American Booksellers Association estimates that the number of independent bookstores in this country has nearly doubled since 2016, amounting to slightly over 2,400 entities registered with them today. It's a far cry from the more robust pre-Amazon days, but still a testament to the durability of reading, education, and the book generally—things that remain no less vital to booksellers and readers today than they were in James Dwyer's lifetime.

"I think of all the objects that humankind has made," Weller further remarked, "books are the most profound because no other object contains such large portions of a person's mind or soul. The book is the vessel where we store people's thoughts, surpassing even the fragile electronic file."

Or, as Ken Sanders flatly put it: "Books are never going to die."

But since a book's caretakers do eventually die, it certainly wouldn't hurt us to thank them while we have the chance.