 |
| William Adams family |
The Great Mormon Tabernacle
Wood From Southern Utah Mission—1856
When the group of pioneers reached the valley of the Little Salt Lake January 13, 1851, they immediately set out to explore their new-found home. Some were assigned to explore the canyon for timber and they found an abundance of great towering pines, giant sentinels of bygone days, their arms reaching up, far up into the blue.
Sometime in the early 1860s, President Brigham Young sent scouts all over the Territory for samples of wood with which to build the Tabernacle organ. It was finally decided that the timber in Parowan Canyon and Pine Valley Mountain was suitable. Excitement ran high when word came to Parowan that the authorities wanted loads and loads of the very best obtainable, and there was keen competition even among the loggers to see who could secure the very best trees.
Sawmills for cutting the logs were plentiful. In the mouth of the canyon on the stream was the sawmill built and run by Richard Benson, but owned by President George A. Smith. The second was about a half-mile farther up the canyon, owned and operated by Bishop Herman D. Bayles. The third, just below the four-mile and directly above the three-mile rock, was built and owned by Ebenezer Hanks, who later sold it to Nathan Benson. The Bayles mill wasn't running full time, as Bishop Bayles was the master carpenter working to complete the rock church.
The logs were hauled by oxteam into the first and third sawmills, where the old up-and-down saws were never idle. Every time the saw went up and down the log would go forward and saw the length of its teeth, then it would go up and down again, taking another bite. Great lengths of timbers and lumber were sawed without even a knot to mar their surface. Hence a good share of the timbers and lumber that went into the Tabernacle Organ was hauled by oxteam from Parowan Main Canyon to Temple Square in Salt Lake City. Some of the pipes were thirty-two feet long.
The following story was told by Bishop Hugh L. Adams:
I remember my father, Hugh L. Adams, telling about going to Salt Lake City with his father, Grandfather William Adams, to haul some of the timbers for the organ. Father was only a boy and was so excited about his first trip to Salt Lake. They made it out to Buck Horn Springs the first day and turned their oxen out to graze during the night. But old Bonny and Bounce and the others got homesick, and the next morning not an oxen could be found. So Grandfather left the boy to look after the outfit, while he hunted the run-away oxen. He tracked them clear back to Parowan, and what a long weary day it was for the little boy, who, at every sound, thought the Indians were after him. About sundown, Grandfather came in with the missing oxen. So over the long weary roads, making from twelve to fifteen miles a day, fording streams, building bridges, trudged the men and oxen, hauling the precious timbers that were to make the most famed organ in all the world.
