Utah Macabre: Frisco

45 minutes west from Beaver, Utah is a silent piece of rugged desert land in the foothills of Utah's San Francisco Mountains, out in the middle of nowhere.  14 miles one way is Milford, Utah, the population of which the United States Census Bureau estimates at 1,348 people.  61 miles the other way is Garrison, Utah, a 200-person town on the Nevada border.  All is wilderness in between.  Here in the San Francisco Mountain foothills in the Sevier Desert are the ruins of a once wild and bustling town called Frisco.  Frisco sprouted up in 1870s, fueled by the fabulously rich Silver Horn mine that yielded thousands of tons of ore worth tens of millions of dollars during its peak years from 1875 to 1885.  People came from all over the world in an attempt to claim their fortunes, make a half-decent living, or just to have a good time.  In the middle of a desert where no one would want to live for almost any reason other than potential riches, water had to be shipped in from miles away for people to drink, although many of the hard-living miners preferred whiskey just fine.  It seems almost everyone writing about Frisco's spectacular past quotes a contemporary writer who described as "Dodge City, Tombstone, Sodom and Gomorrah all rolled into one," although no one seems to know the name of the man or the publication from which the quote is drawn.  Nonetheless, the stories of Frisco's lawlessness and vice abound.  The town is said to have had over 20 saloons and the clientele to sustain them, multiple brothels and an abundance of gambling houses during its decade-long reign as a western boomtown.  According to a piece by Miriam B. Murphy on Utah's History to Go website, murders occurred with such frequency that a wagon was specially contracted by the city to pick up bodies of the slain on a regular basis and take them out to the cemetery to buried, so in order to clean up the town, Marshal Pearson from Pioche, Nevada was hired and given carte blanche.  Reportedly, shortly after arriving in town, Pearson announced that he didn't intend to make any arrests, but rather, he planned on taking a "shoot first, ask questions later" approach to law enforcement, and anyone who didn't like that should just leave town.  The story goes that he shot six men on his first night.

In 1885, the raucous town's spirit was crushed by the caving in of the Silver Horn Mine, though it was the only casualty.  Outside of working hours, the mine, which had been insufficiently maintained as the men rushed along trying to extract more and more ore at an impossible pace, collapsed in on itself with such force that shattered windows throughout town and in the next settlement over.  It was only by sheer luck that it happened at a moment when there were no workers inside, unlike similar mining accidents throughout history.  The mine would open again in a few years, but it was never the same as it had been before, and by the 1920s, the entire town was abandoned.  Today it still stands there as a broken shell of what was, testifying to the people who came before and the people that never left, lying buried in the hillside.
Naturally, there are a few stories about the hauntings about Frisco, Utah, stories about feeling watched or hearing strange sounds and seeing strange lights, but I think I have something a little more interesting.  To be perfectly frank, I'm doubtful about its authenticity, but it's an interesting, unnerving thing nonetheless, and if it is true, it's far too remarkable to be ignored.  The following is from two pages torn from a journal and discovered by Kim Baker, a contractor with the Utah Division of Oil, Gas and Mining who was exploring the abandoned mines near Frisco as part of a government effort to seal up hazardous mine shafts.  She reportedly discovered the pages stored in a notch 25 feet down a shaft relatively near the original Silver Horn Mine.  A archeological unit from Brigham Young University was called in to investigate the site further, but nothing else of significance was found.  Their authenticity is in dispute.  The first of the pages was dated January 30, 1885, a fortnight before the collapse of the Silver Horn Mine.

January 30, 1885

Blue moon this night, was full on first of the month also.  Saw something I almost can't believe but not for mine own eyes.  Left the warmth of my bed to do what nature called upon me, yet as I made my way to the privy outside heard a sound, like the breaking of bones and the tearing of flesh.  What I then saw was a figure what glowed in the moonlight, apart from my lamp.  I can only suppose that what I saw was with sound mind, for I smelled it also, it smelled of rotting flesh and it made me heart sink to the pit of my stomach.  What I observed was like a man, but entirely not.  It was tall, at least to 7 feet high, and pale, enhanced by the glow of the moonlight which colored it blue and grey, save for the shine of red that filled its lips and appeared to drip messily over its form.  Its limbs were long and its spine crooked, bent with a hunch at the shoulders, and I could see its breath fill and escape its trunk at a rapid but labored pace.  What poor soul it held in its claws was long gone and dangled without life or what he had been before this fate.  The bones of the thing's limbs looked to be go past its real joints, so that the bones stood past where the arms and knees must bend, and as they moved, it made a ghastly clicking sound.  I could not contain my horror and the thing turned and saw me so that I could see its face with true honesty.  Its eyes glistened in deep in their sockets neath a heavy brow and its nose was small and bent.  There was a familiarity to it that I cannot place, like I know him and yet I could not recognize his poor victim.  For a instant, my heart froze in terror and still beat with great labor as if fighting against the freeze, each beat pushing with almost conscious force.  If the thing could think at all, it did not show on its face.  It dropped the meat it held like it had loss all meaning and instinct took over so that I fired my Colt and loosed a shot at it.  I cannot tell if I hit my mark, but its mouth opened wide to show yellow long teeth and took a step toward me.  I shot again and this time I'm sure I hit my mark, but it moved faster unhindered.  As I fell back in terror assuming my fate, the thing galloped right over my head and ran further.  I could see it fall once, throwing up dirt, and I heard a yelp, but it quickly came upright and soon vanished into the mine.  I will not go back down.  I cannot let them go into the mine.

Some experts in cryptozoology believe the writer of the journal entry is describing a "wendigo".