Postcard From Utah

One of my favorite roads in Utah

Having traveled in every state in the U.S. except Alaska (on my bucket list), other than my native Texas, one of my favorite places is Utah. The 10th least densely populated state, it is home to only about 3 million folks and the vast majority of those reside in and around Salt Lake City. That leaves the rest of the state to small towns, open spaces and long stretches of road winding through some of the most wild an beautiful landscape you will ever see.

While Utah has the wooded mountains of the Wasatch Range and the Unita Mountains with their snow-capped peaks rising over 13,500', the region I prefer is the scenic southern and southeastern area's with its rugged, stark landscapes of weathered sandstone. Here is where National Parks such as Bryce, Canyonlands, Arches, Capitol Reef and Zion can be found. There are also numerous state parks such as Dead Horse Point and Monument Valley.

Best of all are the seemingly hundreds of remote hiking trails where you can go for hours without seeing another person; where you can be awed and totally transfixed by the power of nature and its beauty; where you can be standing in a shallow, gurgling stream of crystal clear water in between two sheer canyon walls rising hundreds of feet and feel  as if you are nothing more than a little ant lucky to live on this amazing planet. You don't need to go to a huge, beautiful but impersonal cathedral with stained-glass windows and it doesn't have to be on a Sunday morning, stop and look, stop and listen, this is where you meet God.



Hoodoos (also called Fairy Chimneys) in
Bryce Canyon National Park

The start of another great day...

...and the end of one.

 

Big Bo Head

On one of my little road trips, I found myself rather aimlessly driving south out of Mount Pleasant, Texas on Highway 271. It was a good day for aimless driving on backroads - late spring before the heat becomes uncomfortable for even us native Texans, just me in the pickup singing along to music I grew up with (songs the middle-age adults call "Oldies, but goodies" and the teenagers call "old timey stuff") and raising an index finger in greeting to the few oncoming cars I encountered. You never know what you might find when you drive off the interstate, but I was still a bit surprised when I starting seeing numerous poultry processing buildings, but no chickens to go with them. Just a few more miles down the road and before hitting the town limit signs for Pittsburg, I came upon a large, white-columned pavilion topped off with the bust of a man wearing a big, black Pilgrim hat complete with a buckle. I knew right away what I had stumbled upon - the headquarters for Pilgrim's Pride, the largest producer of chickens in America.
 
Lonnie "Bo" Pilgrim and his brother Aubrey, started Pilgrim's Pride in 1946 as a feed store right there in little Pittsburg, Texas, population just a bit over 4,400. One of the brother's successful gimmicks was to give a live baby chick with every order of feed. The local farmers and children loved the free chickens, which were very cheap to provide, and to raise them required feed. In effect, the more cheap baby chickens they gave away, the more higher-profit feed they sold.

Bo capitalized on his last name by wearing his signature Pilgrim's hat wherever he made an appearance. As he became more famous through personal appearances and TV advertising, Pilgrim's Pride became larger and larger. Eventually they became the supplier of chickens and chicken parts to Kentucky Fried Chicken, Wendy's, Wal-Mart, and Publix among many other large sellers to the public. There are now about 38,000 employees selling 36 million chickens each and every week. In a year's time, Pilgrim's Pride provides 9.5 billion pounds of live chickens which earns the company over $8.1 billion per year. Not bad for a little small-town feed store!
 
In the pavilion under the 37-foot tall Bo head is another sculpture depicting a younger Bo Pilgrim seated on a bench reading his Bible. Scattered around on one end of the bench are "Good News For Modern Man" pamphlets which the devoutly religious Bo has had printed in many different languages and distributed around the world. The Bo statue holds his Bible and is reading the five loaves and the two fishes story from the Book of Luke. On the other end of the bench is a statue of Bo's pet chicken, Henrietta, who was a regular feature in Pilgrim's Pride advertising."

Strangely, there were very few workers around the plant and the beautiful mansion-looking building across the street was for sale. And what about those missing chickens? Well, after getting back home that evening, I did a little research and found that controlling interest in Pilgrim's Pride had been purchased by a Brazilian multi-national company and the headquarters moved to Greeley, Colorado. A good number of the local folks lost their jobs and evidently the missing chickens were all being raised somewhere else. It wasn't bad news for old Bo though. At last report, he is still with us and very comfortably retired. Living in a large mansion on the outskirts of Pittsburg which the locals call "Cluckingham Palace," he is occasionally spotted around town - always without the hat.
 

World's Littlest Skyscraper

In 1912 with the discovery of oil in tiny Burkburnett, Texas, many land owners in Wichita County became almost instant millionaires. Million dollar deals for mineral rights were being negotiated on street corners and under open-air tents in the nearby town of Wichita Falls because there were not enough office buildings to meet the demands of the bankers and oil companies. Seeing an opportunity, promoter J.D. McMahon arrived in Wichita Falls in 1918 from Philadelphia with blueprints in hand for a multi-story office building he promised to build on a vacant lot he had purchased just across the street from the thriving St. James hotel. He quickly sold $200,000 (equivalent to $2,720,000 in 2015) in stock to investors caught up in the frenzy of making a quick financial killing.

What J.D. conveniently forgot to point out to his investors however was that his blueprint was in inches rather than feet. Evidently too busy making other deals to keep an eye on construction while McMahon was building his skyscraper, the investors eventually found themselves owners of a building that was much closer to being an elevator shaft than the skyscraper office building they had envisioned. The building's outside dimensions were only 11 feet by 19 feet and only 4 stories tall. There was no elevator and the interior stairs leading to the upper floors took up 25% of the floor space.

When the duped investors sought out J.D. to get their money back, they discovered he was nowhere to be found. He was finally located back in Philadelphia, but when legal recourse was attempted, investors found they did not have a case - J.D. had built exactly what the blueprints called for and they had signed off on them.

With office space in such short supply, several of the oil companies crammed in a few desks and a handful of workers had to be content that at least they were working out of the hot sun and off the dusty streets. Eventually, the boom ceased and shortly afterwards came the Great Depression. The offices were closed, the desks removed, the windows boarded up and the little building was abandoned. In 1931, a fire broke out and made the interior unusable. For the next 55 years the structure remained an empty, burned-out forgotten shell.

By 1986, the city had assumed ownership due to non-payment of back taxes, but they didn't know what to do with it and didn't want it so they simply gave it to the Wichita County Heritage Society. The Society raised funds and attempted to restore the long-neglected and crumbling structure, but it proved too much and several years later it was once again abandoned and returned to the city.

The city was on the verge of having the crumbling building demolished when a few powerful citizens intervened to save it. The city hired the architectural firm of Bundy, Young, Sims & Potter to stabilize the structure until they figured out what to do with it. While working on the building, the firm became interested in the history and legacy of it and in 2000, they formed a partnership with Groves Electric, another local business, to purchase it. The city was only too happy to have it off their hands and sold it to them for $3,748. The partnership began restoration work and were close to completion when in 2003 a tornado tore through downtown Wichita Falls and a 15-foot section of a brick wall was knocked down and severe damage done to the interior. In 2005 after more than $250,000 in repairs had been completed, the little skyscraper was good as new.

Now, almost 100 years after it was erected, the building has withstood fire, tornado and years of neglect to be a symbol of the greed, graft and gullibility of the oil boom days in Texas. It is listed on the Texas Historic Landmark Building rolls and the Guinness Book of World Records has certified it as the World's Littlest Skyscraper. And yes, it does have tenants. In addition to being a tourist attraction, an antique dealer and an artist call the little skyscraper at 701 LaSalle Street their business home.

A lot of things in Texas really are bigger, but there's at least one thing that is the littlest.