Speaker Series 2022 -2023 Season

Previous Speakers:

November 14 - David Ammot, director of Preservation Utah will speak on the grand estates of Millcreek and Holladay, and the influential People who created them.

January 23 - Forrest Cuch of the Ute Indian Tribe. He is and author, teacher, former director of Utah Division of Indian Affairs, and climate activist.

Attached is the photo and bio of our next speaker, Forrest Cuch (rhymes with hutch).  It’s an impressive bio and we’re in for another great evening. He will speak on the early history (pre-Mormon settlement) of the area. I hope you will all attend and bring your friends. January 23 7pm  

Forrest S. Cuch is an enrolled member of the Ute Indian Tribe. He was born in 1951 and raised on the Uintah and Ouray Ute Indian Reservation in northeastern Utah. Forrest was raised in the sacred Ute/Shoshone Sundance religion. He became a sun dancer as with his father and uncles. He has also participated in sweat lodge ceremonies throughout his life and currently conducts ceremonies on his ranch, which consists of eight horses, some of which are used for equine therapy (horse medicine). 

He has a Bachelor of Arts Degree in the Behavioral Sciences from Westminster College, Salt Lake City, Utah. During his 38-year career, Forrest has held many challenging positions beginning with education director for the Ute Indian Tribe. He has also served as tribal planner/administrator for an east coast tribe (Wampanoag Tribe of Aquinnah, MA), and social studies department head/teacher for his high school alma mater, Wasatch Academy, Mt. Pleasant, Utah. Forrest served as executive director, Utah Division of Indian Affairs (1997-2011). During this time, he published, A History of Utah’s American Indians, Utah State University Press, 2000. Forrest played a key role in the PBS/KUED sponsored curriculum project entitled; We Shall Remain, which features a video series of the histories of the Utah tribes with accompanying materials.

Throughout his career, he has worked to call attention to the ancient presence and contributions of American Indian people throughout the Western Hemisphere, including the intermountain west. In various forums, he has addressed many critical issues facing all American Indians including racial injustice and environmental racism. He is currently engaged in working with spiritual leaders throughout the Western Hemisphere to usher in the new shift in feminine conscious known of as the New Earth and calling attention to Climate Change and Harm to Mother Earth. Forrest strongly believes racism and environmental injustice are interrelated: “How man treats man is reflected in how we treat the environment. We are witnessing a high degree of environmental violence and destruction which correlates with how we treat each other.”

He has served on numerous boards from Salt Lake Organizing Committee for the 2002 Winter Olympic Games to trustee on several conservation organizations, most notable is Pax Natura, a Salt Lake City based conservation organization which does work internationally. Most recently, he serves as trustee to Wasatch Hot Springs Alliance devoted to preserving an ancient mineral hot spring in north Salt Lake Valley. He also continues to be outspoken about climate change as it relates to water depletion of the Colorado River.

Previous Speakers:

Previous  Presentations

The 5th Annual Holladay History Night was conducted on October 24, 2019 at the Holladay City Building.  

Entertainment and a new film covering Holladay's History from 1940 to 1950 were presented.  There were displays, Pictures, and refreshments.  

Following are photos of items donated for the planned Holladay History Museum and library.  

Three Holladay Members over 100 years old were in attendance and honored.

     Historic Homes Tour 

Spring Creek is a perennial stream that originates from the foothills of Mount Olympus and--prior to its culverting in the mid-twentieth century-meandered through the Salt Lake Valley until emptying into the Jordan River. From the onset of Holladay’s establishment in 1847, the community’s founders took advantage of Spring Creek to provide water for domestic purposes and to irrigate the first crops planted outside of Salt Lake City. These same founding settlers further utilized Spring Creek’s steep banks to construct the rudimentary dugouts that served as Holladay’s first homes. For the rest of the nineteenth century, Spring Creek offered a vital lifeline for Holladay’s residents who utilized its waters to support the development of their country village.

The first decade of the twentieth century marked a change to Holladay’s rural character as Spring Creek, Big Cottonwood Creek, and other bosque-lined waterways attracted those seeking reprieve from Salt Lake City’s sweltering summers. Prominent Salt Lake families including the Walkers, the Moyles, the Judges, and the Kinneys constructed “summer cottages” that transformed Holladay into a popular resort community. Further development came to Holladay in the second decade of the twentieth century following the establishment of a local streetcar line in 1912 and onset of mass-produced automobiles in 1913. In a span of a few short years, these together with various other technological innovations and social transformations converted Holladay from a rural town into fully-fledged Salt Lake City suburb.

Prominent businessmen from Salt Lake City wishing to escape that city’s pollution, bustle, and noise constructed often-large homes in Holladay reflecting Tudor, Colonial Revival, Craftsman, and other domestic architectural styles in vogue during the first half of the twentieth century. Many of these homes were surrounded by large gardens featuring broad lawns, lily pad ponds, swimming pools, tennis courts, pergolas, and other features deemed essential to approaching country life with style.   

After World War II, Holladay, together with other parts of the Salt Lake Valley, experienced a population and corresponding construction boom that eliminated much of the community’s rural character. This boom led to the destruction of the pioneer homes and early estates that had long-informed Holladay’s unique identity. Fortunately, small pockets of Holladay’s built and pastoral history still survive, allowing passersby to get an occasional glimpse of the Holladay of yesteryear. 

#2 Wehrli and Ruth Pack Home 2480 Kentucky Avenue

Wehrli Pack was born in Laie, Hawaii but spent most of his life living in Chicago, Illinois, Portland, Oregon and Salt Lake City. A true “jack of all trades,” Pack enjoyed a varied career as an inventor, scientist, radio engineer, farmer, politician, and businessman. Per his autobiography, Pack found little else as satisfying as the years he spent engaged in bettering Holladay’s civic and spiritual well-being. Pack served for years as Holladay’s LDS bishop, as the community’s sole grocer, as chairman of the Holladay Civic League, and as head of a corporation tasked with overseeing Spring Creek’s development. Beyond these public roles, Pack found ways to act privately to “improve” his hometown. When liquor licenses became available for Holladay, Pack purchased these licenses in a successful effort to prevent bars from opening within Holladay’s community limits. Pack built his Holladay home in 1933 after touring through the community and finding a strawberry farm he thought was particularly beautiful. After purchasing the farm, he employed a yet-to-be identified architect to design him a house and adjoining brick barn (now demolished) on the same land. Pack chose the Tudor style for his home, and by so doing contributed to the large number of similarly-styled homes built in and around Spring Creek during the first three decades of the twentieth century. The Pack house was particularly distinguished by its unusual boomerang shape, its surviving Claycraft fireplace surround in the living room, and the equally impressive, valuable, and still-intact Malibu tiled main floor bathroom. Now long-extinct, the California-based Claycraft and Malibu Tile Manufactures produced highly desirable art tiles that at one time were common in Salt Lake City-area homes. After Pack died in the mid-1970s, the Pack family home was sold to investors who insensitively added to the building and utilized it as a nursing home. Upon buying the home in the late 1980s, its current owners excessively renovated its exterior and interior and returned it to use as a single-family residence

#3 William Harvey and Sarah Ross Home (Ross Hame) 4769 S. Holladay Blvd

In 1919, William Harvey Ross inherited the Gunnison Valley Sugar Beet Company from his father who passed away that same year. At that point in time, the Gunnison Sugar Company was at a critical point in its fortunes; for years, the company had failed to turn a profit and was facing bankruptcy. Quoting a 1924 article published in the Gunnison Valley News, after suffering losses “as to threaten the very existence of the [Utah sugar} industry itself” famed chewing gum industrialist William Wrigley Jr. “appeared like a rainbow after a storm” and saved the Gunnison Valley Sugar Company from insolvency. Wrigley purchased Gunnison Sugar to insure himself a steady supply of sweetener for his chewing gum and left Ross in as company president. In a short time, Ross’s fortunes went from dire to rosy, a happy turn of events allowed Ross to build his dream home in Holladay. In 1922, Ross employed the prominent Salt Lake City architectural firm, Ware, Treganza, and Cannon to design a home which he called “Ross Hame” in acknowledgement of his family’s Scottish ancestry. This was one of the last homes that Ware, Treganza, and Cannon designed before the firm’s dissolution in the early 1920s. Initially this home was designed as a summer villa with sleeping porches in lieu of bedrooms, with numerous French doors and windows that opened to catch cooling breezes from Spring Creek, and with large gardens that included two Lilly pad ponds, a series of Japanese bridges, a swimming pool, tennis court, orchard, barbecue patio, and a stable. At some point in its design, however, this home was transformed into the Ross family’s year-round residence and remained such through the 1920s and much of the 1930s. In 1955, the current owners purchased this house. A year later, they sold the back acre and a half to Peter Lindstrom who fled to Utah after his first wife, actor Ingrid Bergman, divorced Lindstrom after involving herself with director Frederico Fellini while filming the 1950 movie Stromboli. Like many other old estates in Holladay, Lindstrom’s home will likely soon be demolished to make way for new development. As of today, however, the home can still be seen from the backyard of Ross Hame.

The Harold W. and Evelyn Burton Home

(National Register of Historic Places)

The Harold W. and Evelyn Burton House, constructed in 1923  in Holladay, Utah, is locally significant in the area of architecture because of the one-of-a kind French style design and location and also because of the significance of the person who designed and lived in it.  The house was designed by Harold W. Burton and was the primary residence for Harold and Evelyn and their four children from 1923 through 1930.  The house has had six owners in the ensuing years and is currently owned by Hank and Kim Duffy.

Evelyn Burton was active in the developing of Gilmer Park Subdivision, now listed as a part of the Gilmer Park Historic District.  

Harold Burton’s firm, Pope & Burton, designed several significant and iconic building in Utah and the region during the time he lived in the house.  Because of health reasons he moved to California in 1930 where he continued to design many temples and meeting houses for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the US and Canada.  He ultimately moved back to Utah and became the Chief Supervising Architect for the Church.

His influence is felt worldwide in the buildings he designed and projects he supervised.  Many of his projects are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.