6 July 2020 - Small towns

A friend and I took a little trip south to the middle of the state yesterday. We went to Desert Lake to see if we could find a Cassin's Sparrow that had been spotted there the day before as well as early yesterday morning. In hindsight, we should have started much earlier--probably predawn. It was hot--98 degrees. No shade, no cover, and as the day wore on the biting flies came out.  Yikes!  Yes, we did get some brief, but good looks at the bird.  However, this is incidental to the bigger part of the story.  

It has been years and years since I have been in this area. I had forgotten how breathtakingly beautiful the drive was. So hard to stay on the road when you want to pull over and look at the scenery every mile--especially when there is no shoulder on a busy, semi-truck filled highway. Highway 6 passes by a small town called Helper. The last time I went through Helper, it was practically a ghost town. Empty boarded up buildings. Not many people living there, and for those who were, it wasn't easy. 

Helper was a railroading center for the coal mining industry and was named for the helper engines added to the trains to get them up the steep grade to Soldier Summit. 

I was shocked and delighted to see that Helper is alive and thriving as destination, and an art town. The downtown is revitalized, buildings have been repaired and spruced up rather than torn down. It is wonderful to see. There are art galleries and mining museums and the combination of both.  Here is Big John, billed as the largest miner in the world. 

 And if you don't believe it, check out his shoe size. 

I am a huge fan of vintage signs, signs painted on buildings and neon signs. Helper had it all. 

Seriously, when was the last time you saw a Piggly Wiggly, much less a sign? 

I missed the Dining and Dancing sign. 

The next photo tickled me because Helper was a coal mining town. In the '40s during World War II, they were producing 2000 tons of coal a day. The name on the loose crayon is Coal Black. 

 We stopped at the hot dog stand because the menu board out front announced Huckleberry Floats.  Viv and I are huge huckleberry fans and the floats were wonderfully refreshing on a very hot day.