Eureka, Utah. Juab County. Population: 800. Status: Semi-ghost town. Incorporated 1892.
Upon arriving in the little former mining town of Eureka, I was primarily interested in learning where the cemetery was. Not only do I like the atmosphere of old, decrepit cemeteries, but Eureka's held special interest for me because I had heard that one of my ancestors and his 4 small children were buried there.
However, I was in no hurry to get there. Once my husband and I saw main street and it's eery, halfway standing storefronts mingled with currently operating small businesses, we decided to explore a little before continuing in my quest to find the cemetery.
Because it was Labor Day, the few shops that had actually had customers in the last century were closed. Unfazed, I continued to be enthralled by storefronts whose interiors had completely decayed, and hundred year old advertisements and wall art that helped us piece together the story of this old town little by little.
An elderly man (who must have seen me ogling the windows of several boarded up shacks) approached us. He introduced himself as Bill Baum, and offered to take us inside some of the deteriorating buildings. I was somewhat skeptical about his credentials, but since he acted like he knew what he was doing, we took him up on it.
He was apparently an artist from Provo, and had moved to Eureka decades ago to see if he could sell his paintings and other odds and ends. He unlocked the door to one of the shops, which quite frankly was not necessary- it seemed that all it would take was one splinter to be transferred from the door to someone's finger to compromise the entire thing and cause a wooden landslide. Inside, we were amazed to see a very updated room filled with wood sculptures, painted clocks, pictures, and other crafty things. Bill had converted what used to be a bar into his little gallery.
After Bill had proudly shown us his collection, we strolled over to another small shop, which had an ancient sign over the top calling it the Gatley Building. As soon as I stepped into the room, I was overwhelmed by stuff. Bill was in the process of converting this shop into an antique store, and he had antiques enough for all the hipster thrift stores in Provo combined. The space still felt and smelled very old. Right next to the door stood a well...going down through the middle of the floor. Bill happily dropped a marble down it so we could see how deep down the water was. It was at this point that Bill started giving me the story I really wanted. The well has been active in the Gatley Building for over 80 years. During the hey-day of Eureka as a mining town, the Building was a brewery, kept secret because of the Prohibition sweep in the 20's. Smugglers would use the well (which still had the original bucket attached) to hide and move whiskey. The back of the building was still set up for secretive brewing. As Bill was telling the stories of the building and the people that once made it a lively place, I began to get a feeling of eeriness and loneliness. Once a place of activity and energy, the Gatley Building was now an empty, peeling, sagging room with a single lightbulb illuminating the piles of old, lost items that Bill had collected from the centuries before. Eureka had all but shut down in 1957 when mining became less profitable, taking the life and spirit of the town with it.
As our 80-year old tourguide continued to reminisce on the prosperous days of the town, I veered off into a side room of the soon-to-be antique gallery. This room was almost completely empty, adding to the feeling of abandonment. There were two lone shopping carts, aged with rust and the look of a decades-old style. Bill had mentioned that he had rescued these carts from a market that used to be across main street but had been demolished several years ago. He thought they would be a nice display somewhere in his future shop. This is the photograph I chose to take. I feel the loneliness and the dreariness of an old town with tough people that worked and worked until there was no more work.
Although I originally intended to find my own sort of story at the Eureka cemetery, I ended up finding a completely different, and probably largely untold one with Bill Baum at the Gatley Building on Main Street.
