09/09/2021
100 feet under the murky waters of the Jordanelle reservoir, a microcosm of a century of Utah life sits buried in silt. Keetley, Utah, was once a major player in both Summit and Wasatch counties, thanks to the Ontario mine, its history with Japanese internment, and its long history with the mining industry. The land once held tourist destinations like the Blue Goose and the largest WWII voluntary Japanese evacuation in the country. Beyond its immediate importance in major historical events in Utah, however, Keetley is important simply for the breadth of its historical context. Both senators and depression-struck miners lived there. Wealthy socialites passed through just a few years before su***de was considered an option preferred to bankruptcy. Although Keetley is now a watery shell of its former self, it still has much to teach us about the people that lived there, the railways that passed through the site, the Japanese voluntary evacuation in WWII, and the history of mining in Wasatch County. The importance of the site can’t be underestimated, especially with the current drought potentially allowing us another chance at examining this important part of Utah and national history.
If you’ve ever been to the Jordanelle Reservoir, you may not have realized the rich history lurking in the depths below you. Keetley, the town that drowned in the reservoir's waters, was home to cattle ranchers, miners, bootleggers, and Japanese-Americans forcibly removed from their homes during World War II.
After silver was discovered in Park City, prospectors opened the Ontario claim to the east of town in 1872 and named the area after Pony Express rider Jack Keetley. John 'Jack' Keetley, born November 28, 1841, grew up in Marysville, Kansas. In his youth, as a pony express rider, he was known for completing the longest ride without stopping, except to change horses. He rode 300 miles in twenty-four hours. Eventually, the entire Keetley area was bought by George and Donald Fisher for ranching.
During the silver mining boom of the 1920s, the Fishers filled the area with two-story buildings that housed up to 600 miners. They leased the rest of the land for a schoolhouse, a store, and an amusement hall called the Blue Goose, run by a pair of brothers named Big and Little Joe. The Blue Goose hosted boxing matches, dance nights, and had pool tables, a marble-topped bar, and during Prohibition, a bootlegging operation.
After the Great Depression stalled Utah’s mining operations, Keetley was mostly deserted. One of the Fisher brothers leased the land in 1942 to a Japanese-American businessman named Fred Wada. Wada established a farm co-op in Keetley as an alternative for Japanese-American citizens who would otherwise be sent to internment camps such as the one outside Delta, Utah. Although the Park City Town Council and the local sheriff lobbied for the removal of the co-op, Utah's Governor Herbert Maw praised the Keetley farmers and called them “loyal high-class citizens” after sampling a box of their produce.
When the dam gates closed in 1995 to provide water for a growing population, one historian lamented that “when the [Jordanelle Reservoir] is filled and all the recreational facilities in use, people are not likely to remember… the small town [of Keetley]… far below them in its watery grave.” Now, under 5.1 square miles of water is the drowned Ontario mine, the empty miners' quarters, the ruins of the Blue Goose, and Fred Wada’s fields.
In 1927 George and Gail Fisher leased some land west of the ranch buildings to an outfit out of Butte, Montana. These men, remembered only as Big and Little Joe, built an 80-foot square amusement hall on the property. They painted it blue and named it the Blue Goose. It was outfitted regally with a heavy marble-topped bar and stained-glass barroom doors. For a few years, this was a favorite entertainment spot for miners and out-of-towners, and it quickly developed a reputation that rivaled the dance halls of Park City. The Blue Goose offered a variety of entertainment, including weekly smokers—boxing and wrestling matches that listed out-of-state as well as local talent on the card.
On weekends dances were held at the Blue Goose. A Salt Lake City socialite, who also ran a string of girls in Park City, furnished dance partners. Later, when it became more lucrative to take the girls to Salt Lake City, the dances were attended by local girls.
Gambling was popular at the Blue Goose, and card rooms were open nightly. Game stakes could run as high as $1,000 in an evening. There were also pool and craps tables. The biggest draw was panguingue (pan), a fast-moving card game usually played by six. Charlie Thompson was the local champion. One evening, the story goes, he won a service station, an oil and gas distributorship, and a diamond ring.
During prohibition, the grounds around the Blue Goose became a popular hiding place for locally produced whiskey. Heber's newspaper, the Wasatch Wave, reported several "Big Whiskey Catches" by Sheriff Fraughton during 1927 and 1928. The Fisher ranch had its own problems with bootleggers. The Fishers had leased some bottom grazing land to an Idaho hog raiser who sold the Fishers pork to supply to the mines. This worked well for several years until Neil Fisher noticed a strong odor, one not usually associated with pigs. He and his father quickly identified the smell as mash and uncovered a complete bootlegging operation in the pens. The sheriff ran the man out of the area.
When the depression hit, transportation became a problem, and business at the Blue Goose declined. It closed its doors in 1930. Later, Wilson Young and Dick Glazier held Boy Scout activities there, and on Saturday mornings Guy Coleman brought movies from his theater in Midway. He also furnished Wednesday night films at the mine boardinghouse. The Blue Goose was finally torn down sometime between 1937 and 1941.
During World War II Keetley became the wartime home of 140 Japanese Americans, the largest such group to resettle voluntarily away from the West Coast. Fred Wada, a thirty-five-year-old California businessman, organized a nonprofit cooperative enterprise of Japanese Americans to engage in farming, in part to help the war effort by producing foodstuffs and also to avoid being sent to an internment camp. He quickly recruited 140 members.
He and around 90 settlers he’d recruited left for Keetley on March 26th, 1942, not a day too soon. Four days later, the army’s freeze order went into effect, prohibiting any more voluntary travel for Japanese Americans.
Ultimately, almost 5,000 Japanese Americans would voluntarily relocate. Wada first visited Duchesne County but found that although they needed farm labor there, it was too remote from transportation lines to make it profitable. He then visited Keetley, and George Fisher offered to lease Wada his "farm." Earlier, George had written U.S. attorney Dan B. Shields to see if this transaction was legal.
The council of Park City as well as the Wasatch County sheriff wrote Gov. Herbert B. Maw asking that the Japanese be kept out of the area. They feared their presence would lower the standard of living. Although the colony caused much discussion, there were only a few incidents of overt hostility at Keetley. Soon after the group arrived, on the night of April 9 as the miners were getting off shift, someone in a passing car threw a stick of dynamite toward the ranch buildings. No one was injured. There were other blasts during the month, but eventually, everything settled back to normal. The newcomers had little time to worry about what others thought.
As the snow melted, they could see what a monumental task lay ahead of them. This was not farmland as they had supposed. It was hilly, rocky, and covered with sagebrush. "Hell," said Fred Wada, “we had to move 50 tons of rocks to clear 150 acres to farm." During those difficult first months, using the farm equipment they had brought with them, they cleared the sagebrush and dug out the rocks by hand. They laid out a large truck garden, planting it mostly in lettuce and strawberries. Another thousand acres went into hay. Land too hilly to plant was subleased to a rancher. The colonists also built a large chicken coop and a pigpen to house the fifty chickens and eight pigs they owned. "The chickens, however, didn't live long, Masao Tsujimoto recalled, "since fried chicken came constantly in our minds whenever we saw them pecking around." After the garden was planted there was not enough work to support all those in the colony. Wives and children remained behind to tend the crops while many of the men contracted to work at a sugar beet operation in Spanish Fork and several others at an orchard and produce farm in Orem, returning on weekends to help at Keetley.
The energetic newcomers also found time to help neighboring farmers in the Heber Valley. The summer harvest was good and required the help of all ages. Children as young as ten and grandparents over seventy-five worked side by side. They sold much of their produce to Safeway and sent some to the Topaz internment camp in Millard County. They also sold to locals at a roadside stand. Proud of their achievement, they sent a box of their "finest" beets, lettuce, peas, turnips, and onions to Governor Maw. His thank you letter to Fred Wada, dated July 30, 1942, praised the Japanese colony: "You are proving by your work that you are loyal high-class citizens." The Mormon cooperative in Heber taught them how to can their surplus for winter consumption, but winter came to this mountain valley all too soon for the haggard farmers. The first snow fell on September 9. With the farming season over the Japanese women knitted for the Red Cross and the men found odd jobs. Those who remained at the ranch began raising fingerling trout donated by Sen. Abe Murdock.
Although work occupied much of their day, the small colony still had time for recreation. The Californians especially enjoyed snow sports and took up ice skating, sledding, tobogganing, and skiing with varying degrees of success. In the summer horseback riding was a favorite activity. The girls had a glee club and the boys a baseball team, the Keetley Green Waves, captained by Kaoru Honda, that had a successful season. The colony's young men also formed a basketball team that participated in games sponsored by the Japanese American Citizens League of Salt Lake City. When the war ended the Japanese colony remained to harvest their last crop before returning to the West Coast.
When the Japanese Americans were again afforded the right to move freely after the end of WW2, however, not very many stayed in the area past the final harvest. Enough stayed in Utah to boost Utah’s population of Japanese Americans by 1,183 in the 1950 census, but hardly any stayed in the Keetley area.
About one-third remained in Utah. Today only a handful of locals remember the Japanese colony, but in 1988 the survivors of the Keetley camp gathered in Culver City, California, to share memories of that time with their posterity.
With the Japanese colony gone and work at the mine slowing again, Keetley returned to a quiet existence. George Fisher made a final attempt to establish his dream. With monies received when the federal government widened U.S. Highway 40 in 1947, he converted the apartments into a motel. There was not much to attract tourists to the area, however, and it was eventually sold including school and apartment building. When George Fisher died in 1954, his dream died with him.
Interests in the area opposed the construction of the Jordanelle Dam. The Dam is built on land laced with fissures and weak underground formations. Moreover, there is a history of seismic activity in the area. The Bureau of Reclamation has repeatedly assured Heber Valley residents that the dam is safe and can withstand an earthquake of 6.5 magnitudes on the Richter scale directly below it. Wilson and his supporters have their doubts. Perhaps someday this controversy will add another chapter to the history of Keetley. When the reservoir is filled and all the recreational facilities in use, people are not likely to remember Wilson's warning or the small town of Keetley, Utah, far below them in its watery grave.
