It's easy to credit chairlifts, mountain biking trails, and even the Sundance Film Festival for Park City's meteoric rise as a world-renowned destination. While those things have certainly raised the profile of this gorgeous corner of the Wasatch Mountains, what distinguishes Park City from other mountain destinations is this: how the town has chosen to honor and highlight its past. In 1860, the discovery of silver, gold, and lead in the hillsides just above what is now historic Main Street sowed the  eeds for the thriving community here today. 

And thanks to a few residents who, decades ago, began what has become an ongoing effort to preserve Park City history, the multi-layered story of the town’s early years continues to be shared. Here we provide a brief introduction to seven historic Park City structures, each built during the silver-mining era and each still contributing to the town’s unique architectural and cultural landscape.

McPolin Barn

Standing as a beloved beacon of bucolic serenity along State Road 224 just north of Park City is the McPolin Barn, a structure many Parkites call simply, the big, white barn. Dan and Isabelle McPolin purchased the sprawling farmstead surrounding the barn from the Harrison McLane family in 1896 but did not build the barn until 1921. The McPolins also added the farmhouse to the property, which they moved from today’s intersection of Iron Horse and Bonanza Drives, where it had been the Silver King Con Mill office. Dan passed away a year after the barn was built and the

McPolins’ elder son and daughter-in-law, Patrick and Grace, then moved to the farm with their two children, Jim and Grace, to take over farm operations. Patrick and Grace’s youngest child, Betty Jean was born in the farmhouse in 1925. The children spent their youth riding horses, roller skating in the cavernous barn loft, and skiing in the hills behind the farmstead. In 1947, after the three children had grown and moved away, Patrick sold the family farm to Dr. D.A. Osguthorpe, a Salt Lake City veterinarian who traveled frequently to Park City to care for the horses and mules working in the mines. The Osguthorpe family operated the farm as a dairy for more than 40 years until 1990, when Park City Municipal purchased the property to protect and enhance the town’s entry corridor. Today, the grounds around the barn and its outbuildings, as well as a 1.75-mile Farm Loop trail, are open to the public. Tours of the barn and farmhouse will be presented by Park City Municipal on July 15, August 19, and September 16. Advance tickets are required (parkcity.org).   

Sources: “Home on the Range” by Jay Meehan, Park City Magazine, Summer/Fall 2014; and “Tales of the Barn,” August 23, 2017 and “More Tales from the Barn” August 30, 2017, both by Sally Elliott, parkcityhistory.org. 

Silver King Mine Co. Shaft House

If you’ve ridden or hiked along Mid Mountain Trail through Park City Mountain, then you’re probably familiar with Silver King Mine Co’s shaft house, located at the base of the Bonanza Express chairlift. Silver King was one of three mining companies that operated in Park City during the silver mining era, which lasted from the early-1880s to the mid-1950s. The shaft house—alternatively called the hoist house or headframe building—was one of Silver King’s many above-ground structures. Built in 1895, it once housed a machine shop, hoist room, and furnace room and capped a three-compartment shaft reaching 1,300 feet into the ground. In the early 20th century, the area around the shaft house, known then as Woodside Gulch, buzzed with activity. In addition to the shaft house, the gulch was populated with three boarding houses, an assay office, another machine

shop, a superintendent’s house, a mill, a pig farm, and a tramway loading station to transport ore down the mountain to Park City. The shaft house was active for almost six decades before it was closed in 1953 due to dropping metal prices. In 2022, Friends of Ski Mountain Mining History embarked on a five-year campaign to restore what’s left of the shaft house and other remaining buildings as part of the Silver King Mine Co building complex.   

Source: Park City Historic Mines Inventory, adopted Feb. 4, 2009; “Silver King Mine,” parkcityhistory.org. 

Park City Library

By the 1920s, Park City had made the evolution from a rough-and-tumble silver mining camp to a bona fide community of several hundred families. The three schools, built around 1900, were by then bursting at the seams. And so, in 1926, town leaders proposed a $200,000 bond to build a new high school next to the ballfields at 1255 Park Ave. The bond passed and prominent Salt Lake City architects Scott & Welch were contracted to complete its design. “With beauty and efficiency blended, plans of the building indicate that the school will be one of the most modern in the state,” The Park Record wrote in praise of the high school’s Collegiate-Gothic style. Construction was completed quickly, and Park City’s 200 high school students began classes in the new school at the beginning of the 1927–28 school year. A mechanical arts building was built next door in 1936 (now The Shop Yoga Studio) to house shop and auto mechanic classes. When the current Park City High School opened at 1750 Kearns Blvd in 1977, the old high school became Carl Winters Middle School. The tweens and teens moved out in 1982 when Treasure Mountain Middle School was completed. The old high school sat vacant for several years until the Park City Library moved there from Miners Hospital in 1993. The building underwent an extensive, $9.6 million structural remodel and historic preservation in 2014. The Park City Library remains there and shares the building with Park City Film Series, Park City Cooperative Preschool, and Lucky Ones Coffee.

Sources: “A Look at Lincoln School” by Diane Knispel, parkcityhistory.org; Park City Municipal Corporation Historic Sites inventory, parkcity.org; “New Buildings for Park City High Schoolers,” Mahalla Ruddell, June 15, 2016, parkcityhistory.org; and “A New Chapter” by Jane Gendron, Park City Magazine, Summer/Fall 2015.   

Miners Hospital

No question, mining is and always has been a dangerous profession. Soon after the Park City silver mines reached full capacity in the late 1800s, one dollar from each miner’s paycheck was garnished to a Salt Lake City hospital fund, created to help defray the cost of medical care the miners would inevitably need. But getting to the valley hospitals required a bumpy wagon ride over a steep mountain pass and back down a narrow canyon. In addition, lengthy hospital stays could separate miners from their families in Park City for weeks or sometimes months. So, in December 1903, the Park City Chapter of the Western Federation of Miners Union #144 began raising funds for the construction of a hospital in Park City. Soon after, ground was broken on a one-acre plot near the mouth of Thaynes Canyon donated by Eliza Nelson. Construction of Miners Hospital was completed in October 1904, and by 1911, more than 1,000 patients were being treated there annually. Both politics and economics caused the hospital to change hands multiple times from 1920 until it finally closed for good in 1968. The building would house a skier hostel and a bar through the 1970s. Faced with the prospect of its demolition to make way for development, in 1980 Parkites passed an $800,000 bond to move Miners Hospital to its current home at 1354 Park Ave and reinvent it as the Park City Library. When the library outgrew the former hospital and moved across the street into the old Park City High School building, Miners Hospital was converted to a public event space operated by Park City Municipal.

Sources: “Way We Were: Park City’s First Hospital” by Mahala Ruddell, Park City Museum, January 25, 2019; “Grassroots Healing: The Park City Miners’ Hospital” by Ben Cater, Utah Historical Quarterly, Volume 78, Number 4, 2010; Fraser Buck Collection, Park City Miners’ Hospital, Records 1931-64, Hal Compton Research Museum, Park City Museum.

George Washington School

One of Park City’s oldest buildings—and one of the few that survived an 1898 fire that consumed most of the town—is the George Washington School, located at 543 Park Ave. Built with limestone harvested at a quarry in nearby Peoa, the school was described by The Park Record upon its completion as “one of the finest in the territory … with elegant furniture being installed. It will lack for nothing.” Enrollment at George Washington School declined sharply during the Great Depression, and in 1936 the building was sold for $200 to the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW), which used it as a dance and social hall. The VFW was unable to properly maintain the old school, however, and, in 1970, sold it to an investment company with plans to convert it into the centerpiece of a condominium project called Lodestone. When that failed, it was purchased by a local developer, who remodeled it into a bed and breakfast and called it the Washington School Inn. In 2009, the school was sold once again and underwent a major remodel and historic restoration before opening in 2011 as the luxurious Washington School House Hotel.

Sources: Park City Municipal Historic Sites Inventory, parkcity.org; “George Washington School” by Hal Compton, summitcounty.org; and “Washington School to Become a Hotel” by Andrew Kirk, Park Record, March 12, 2011.

High West Saloon

Almost since the moment it opened in 2009, High West Saloon, located at 703 Park Ave, has been one of Park City’s biggest visitor draws. But long before whiskey began to flow at this local institution, the buildings the distillery occupies played prominent roles in Park City’s evolution. In 1903, after helping construct the Summit County Courthouse in Coalville, Ellsworth Beggs purchased a small house and livery stable at 703 Park Ave. Beggs expanded the livery and added a tall, false front to the building, where he had painted “Beggs & Buckley Livery.” He also razed the property’s original one-story home and replaced it with a two-story, Victorian-esque house in 1907. Beggs discontinued his business in 1911 and began leasing out the livery building. Over the years, multiple tenants occupied the livery, which came to be known as a garage, each repainting the garage’s false front, including Studebaker Brothers Company; National Garage, opened by C.W. Fitch in 1917 to repair and service the town’s growing number of automobiles; Baker Service Garage; and Sinclair Park Motor. In 1965, Burnis Watts, the new superintendent of schools, rented and then purchased the house and garage. He painted the house and built a connection from it to the garage but never disturbed the fading garage sign. When Watts was ready to sell the building in 1997, the city purchased it and owned it until 2007, when it received a proposal for it to house the first legal whiskey distillery in Utah since Prohibition. After a major, historically sensitive renovation, the High West Saloon & Distillery opened in the space in 2009. 

Source: Park City Historic Sites Inventory, “Ellsworth J Beggs House,” parkcity.org and “Old Town Steward” by Tina Stahlke Lewis, Park City Magazine, Winter/Spring 2016.

St. Mary of the Assumption Catholic Church’s 
Old Town Chapel

Three years before Park City was incorporated, a group of miners founded St. Mary of the Assumption Catholic Parish in 1881. The fledgling congregation soon broke ground on a small wood frame church at 121 Park Ave, which was completed in 1882. Just two years later, on July 4, a fire burned the original structure to the ground. Barely two weeks later, church members quickly rallied and began rebuilding the church, along with a new, accompanying school. The new buildings were constructed from fire-proof stone and steel, and were completed by the time school began that fall. St. Mary’s School quickly built a reputation for academic excellence and by 1887 had enrolled 145 students, both Catholic and non-Catholic. Over the years, fluctuations in Park City’s silver mining-led economy dwindled St. Mary’s enrollment until 1933, when the decision was made to shutter the school. St. Mary’s Church suffered another fire in 1950, but once again, through the persistent efforts of parishioners, the church was rebuilt and rededicated that same year. In 1991, as the congregation outgrew its small Old Town chapel, Jim Ivers, a third-generation Parkite, and his wife, Sally, donated land at the base of White Pine Canyon for the site of a new church. Park City’s “new” St. Mary’s Catholic Church (as it is still referred to even today) was dedicated on August 15, 1997, the same day that Catholicism celebrates the Feast of the Assumption. St. Mary’s Old Town Chapel remains open daily to visitors, prayer, and worship and is the longest continuously operating Catholic Church in Utah.

Sources: “Our History,” stmarysparkcity.com; Park City Municipal Historic Sites Inventory, parkcity.org; “St. Mary’s Church” by Hal Compton, summitcounty.org; “Jim Ivers Dies—‘spirit of Park City,’” Deseret News, May 17, 2000.