It seems an unlikely place to build a town, even for those fervid souls who dreamed of hitting the mother lode.
Sheer canyon walls, polished bare rock, steep-sided hollows and hanging canyons choked with glacial debris mark the old American Fork Mining District, about four miles north of Tibble Fork Reservoir.Forest City rose from the rugged terrain about 1872 to become the center of the canyon's earliest and largest boom. It boasted a two-story boarding house for single men, a rough wood-plank saloon, post office and cabins clustered along a dirt road parallel to the American Fork River.
The ramshackle settlement at the mouth of Mary Ellen Gulch was the only town built in the mining district. Possibly as many as 400 people labored at the Sultana Smelter Works in its heyday and in support industries such as charcoal kilns, sawmills and teamsters.
"The whole town existed here because of that smelter," said Charmaine Thompson, a Uinta National Forest archaeologist.
Little remains of Forest City today. The bases of 15 charcoal kilns that provided fuel to heat the smelter's roasting furnace are the most prominent remnants of a bygone era.
Thompson and several local amateur archaeologists this week are trying to unearth other clues to the town's flavor in a Forest Service "Passport in Time" project. The modern-day miners hope to answer basic questions about life in the district.
The project attracted Judge Memorial High School graduate Steve Diaz, who now studies history and anthropology at Puget Sound University in Tacoma, Wash. Diaz said he likes "digging into the past. It's the total anthropological idea of discovering how people lived."
Fourteen-year-old Jocelyn Stricklan probably got to know more about how bugs live, having found creepy crawlers outnumber revealing artifacts. Still, she enjoys the adventure. "It's really fun to learn about the history of Utah," she said.
Forest City came and went so quickly that very little was documented about what went on.
"There are huge gaps in our understanding of the history of American Fork Canyon," Thompson said.
Sketchy evidence suggests the city wasn't as rough and tumble as other mining boom towns of its time. The presence of local families and farmers involved in support businesses imply a somewhat civil lifestyle.
"We suspect life was a little tamer here in Forest City than it was across the divide in Little Cottonwood Canyon. We have to prove that," Thompson said.