Newhouse Was Tamer than Frisco

Saturday was supposed to be a snowy day, but I decided that unless we had a blizzard I was going to Newhouse, a ghost town just five miles farther west on Highway 21 and over the hill from Frisco, about 15 miles west of Milford, UT. The weather turned out to be quite nice. The sky turned blue, and the temperature in Milford was probably in the 50s.

Both Frisco and Newhouse were silver mine towns, but where Frisco was one of the wildest places in the west, Newhouse was just the opposite.

Established "permanently" about 1905 (before this it was a tent town) by Samuel Newhouse, who gained his first fortune in the Bingham mine, the town of Newhouse didn't allow red-light districts or saloons within the its borders. Instead, it had a cafe, library, livery stable, hospital, several stores, a modern hotel, and well-landscaped homes. The mine produced about $3.5 million worth of silver, but it gave out after just five years. By 1921, all that was left operating was the cafe, but it burned down.

I read that the Horn Silver Hotel in Milford has a picture of the old town of Newhouse in its lobby, but the building that I thought might be the hotel looked closed up. I was told that a garage in town has a picture of Frisco, but the garage was closed on Saturday.

I took I-15 to Cove Fort. Did you know there are a couple of test sections between Nephi and Filmore where the speed limit is 80? And I saw a guy being pulled over on the northbound side. I guess 80 just wasn't fast enough. (Sorry for the poor picture; it's tough to get a good picture while driving at 80 mph.)

From Cove Fort I took the dirt Black Rock Road to Highway 257. Black Rock Road crosses these tracks, which parallel 257.

The new Milford windmill farm (biggest windmill farm in Utah) is just north of the Black Rock Road and east of Hwy 257.

Newhouse is spread out over a wide area, with a train line running along the east side--the tracks are gone, but the rail bed now provides the easiest way to drive in here, which I discovered after I'd taken the hard way. Part of the rail bed still has ties mostly buried in the dirt.

There aren't many structures left in Newhouse, and the ones that are seem to be falling off the face of the earth.

This house had a great view of the desert valley and the Wah Wah Mountains.

There's not much left of this stone and stucco house. Two prairie dogs were living in the piece of wall that was the house next door.

Brick walls stand lonely here and there.

One the tracks side of town were smelters and other mining structures I couldn't identify.

Mostly they've all been driven to ruin.

I don't know what this is, but I thought it looked cool. Actually, I know what it is: a bottle bottom, a heavy iron ring, and a piece of wood. What I don't know is why.

To take this picture I scraped a rabbit's nest out of this pipe. He'll have to rebuild, but his house is still in better shape than the human houses around here.

I didn't find the cemetery--I forgot to look for it--but I thought this looked like a fitting marker for the town's industry.

I also went back to part of Frisco, where I visited a couple weeks ago. This is the inside of a charcoal kiln at Frisco.

The structures at Frisco are in better shape than the ones at Newhouse. Many of the Newhouse buildings were moved to Milford, including the dance hall floor. The train station was moved to a nearby ranch, where it's supposedly still in use.

Frisco is in two locations. This is part of the "downtown," which is just below the charcoal kilns. The part with the best surviving structures is below the mines and behind "No Trespassing" signs.

Last week I spent $1,500 to replace the antilock-brake controller and a wheel bearing with speed sensor. Add a little mud, a visit to a couple of ghost towns, and 500 miles on a Saturday, and the Tahoe is happy now.