This month Canyon Blog turned up a small but readily accessible and fascinating bit of history for your enjoyment.
If you’ve ever hiked in Peruvian Gulch in the summer and followed the Peruvian Road up (instead of the hiking trail) where the two come back together just before passing under the tram there is a small grove of trees just west of the dirt road.
If you stop and look carefully, you’ll notice there are logs stacked together that form the corner of a small cabin. That is all that remains of a structure whose only known surviving name is Walker Cabin.
This is where the mystery comes in. No one knows who Walker was. Your investigative journalist worked through a number of sources before stopping, as often happens to this correspondent when other areas fail, at the door of Dick Fleue. Dick, you may recall, is the last living miner to have worked in Little Cottonwood’s mines and the subject of Canyon Blog’s most recent published book, The Last Miner (buy many copies for friends and coworkers).
According to Dick the name was passed on by legendary miner Dan Jacobson, himself born in the town of Alta in 1919 and who would accumulate 50 years under the canyon’s peaks. Dan stated that from the time he was a young lad it had always held that name.
At the end of the Second World War a friend of Dan’s he’d served with in the Pacific was the last to reside there, having spent a year or so living in seclusion in 1946. His name too is no longer known as it went into the ether with Dan when he passed away in 2013.
The two photos here were taken in 1959 by Dick, who kindly provided them to his editor.
Legend has it that for some time hardened steel mining drill bits were treasured away beneath the floor for safe keeping given their expense and value in tunneling. Now it seems the only remaining iron is the single metal bedframe that sticks out from the east end.
As to the Walker name mystery, it will pass on into anonymity like so much of the canyon’s history. In fact, it already has.