A new kind of mitosis is taking place in Draper. In the body of land between the Wasatch Range and I-15, the city's cells are dividing, multiplying, diversifying — at a rate similar to that of a 14-year-old in the midst of a summertime growth spurt.
If you're just now meeting this teenager, you might see only the flashiest, most fashionable aspects: the video stores, mammoth supermarkets and the outlet mall. But look past the gleaming new facades in Draper and you can see into the community's DNA.
That will be especially easy Wednesday afternoon and evening as Draper's genetic material goes on display during a free tour. Pioneer homes, a restored roundhouse and a mansion nicknamed "the symbolic house" will transport visitors to another era, said Draper Historical Society tour guide Marjorie Clements.
"They said this place should be burned down," Clements recalled, tilting her chin at the now-spotless A.G. Edwards-Brower Timing Systems building, 12660 S. Fort St. Instead, Draperites Mark and Lorna Brower made the building over, restoring its original porch and repairing the bricks one square inch at a time. That was two years ago. Herds of urban refugees have been flowing into Draper's new housing developments ever since. Many of the newcomers, Clements added, don't know they're living beside the nuclei of pioneer life in the Salt Lake Valley.
"This tour can renew our appreciation for what the early pioneers did," said Clements. "They built such sturdy houses." The seven stops on the tour also testify to the sturdiness of the Draper's earliest families. They built adobe homes and log cabins such as the one constructed in 1851 by Perry Fitzgerald.
"This is luxurious," Clements said of the cabin, which has two rooms and a loft, and it was conveniently located near a creek. Fitzgerald's descendants donated it to the Draper Historical Society, and in the late 1980s, the cabin had to be taken down when the creek flooded. "We took it down, log by log. We numbered the logs, and then we had big trucks drag them all" to nearby homes, Clements remembered. They reassembled the cabin a few years later, exactly in its original configuration, but they moved it farther from the creek, to 12538 S. 1300 East.
For Wednesday's tour, the log cabin will be retro-decorated back to its 1851 look, with a pioneer bench and furniture just like the Fitzgerald family used, Clements promised. "We'll pretty it up like it's supposed to be."
Take this tour, she added, and you'll be able to envision a time when the people of the Salt Lake Valley bought shoes for horses and for people in the same store — the M & M, where eggs and vegetables served as money. These early Draperites visited each other instead of sending e-mail, milked cows instead of lining up at Jamba Juice, and held onto their heirlooms instead of selling them on eBay.
After peeking into the 19th century, tour participants can drive across Draper, back into a 21st-century estate. The Dean and Pamela Brown "symbolic house" graces Golden Harvest Road, with its octet of dormers, filigreed gazebo and swath of green grass, flowers in every shade of pink, and white benches. The view of the outside is stunning, but you'll forget all that, said Clements, when you step inside.
The house is Draper's answer to the Smithsonian Institution. "I tell you, come and see this place. You have got to see it," breathed Clements.
"You'll never see another house like it," said Doreen Tresner, whose daughter, Pamela Brown, did the decorating. Dean Brown built the house, plus a cottage for his wife's mother and father, in 1996, and the landscaping has been completed during the past year — except for Pamela's secret garden, a final backyard touch that will be hidden behind vine-strewn bricks.
The 8,500 square feet of living space in the main house is occupied by numerous "children" — the dolls Pamela has kept since she was a toddler. Five bookcases of children's literature and 125 miniquilts are spread through the house and up into the dolls' loft. In the pioneer room and kitchen, visitors can take in the atmosphere of the 1850s, with the mammy rocker, Mormon couch, spinning wheels, loom, open-hearth fireplace and bake-oven. These rooms honor Pamela's fifth-great-grandmother, Phebe Draper Palmer Brown. Phebe and her husband, Ebenezer, were the first settlers here, after living on the East Coast — so Pamela has mixed some Maryland and Virginia into her decor. The living-room windows are patterned after those in Williamsburg, while the panes in an Annapolis home inspired the Palladian window in Pamela's master bedroom.
The Draper Historical Park and three other historic homes complete Wednesday's tour. All stops will be open from 4 to 8 p.m., so, Clements said, we can take our time talking with the hosts. The tour isn't about looking at inanimate objects as much as it is about hearing Draperites' stories about their pioneer predecessors, she added. "It's the sharing that's important, when people learn about their families and their neighbors' families."
History buffs, and those progressing into buffhood, should start the tour and pick up their guidebooks at the Draper Historical Park, 900 E. 12600 South. Admission is free, but Clements said contributions to the Draper Historical Society are welcome and needed to improve the City Hall history museum.
E-mail: durbani@desnews.com