BRIGHAM CITY — It began as a stereotypical battle: arts and community groups fighting a real estate developer over the planned demolition of a mural painted by one of the nation's best-known native artists.
But last week, the developer offered to pay whatever it costs to rescue the mural, which was scheduled to be reduced to rubble along with the gymnasium that houses it and the rest of the abandoned Indian school.
"I am flabbergasted," Nelson Foss said Tuesday. Foss is curator of a foundation dedicated to the works of the late Allan Houser, who painted the mural in 1954 while teaching at the school. "I just heard five minutes ago. It's amazing. It's philanthropic."
The 6- by 12-foot mural of a Navajo horseman is painted directly on the plaster wall of the gym's entryway and could cost about $40,000 to remove. One appraisal pegs the mural's value at about $50,000.
"I don't know how big of a task it's going to be to have the thing removed," said Matt Petersen, a partner with Cape Advisors Inc., which owns the property. "Hopefully it will be simple, but like everything else it probably won't be."
Petersen, who started the week saying the mural could come down at any time, said Wednesday that Cape decided it would be easiest to remove the mural on its own terms, rather than face possible long delays.
At the time, the Institute of American Indian Arts was lobbying Congress to save the painting and a small group of Brigham City residents plan to ask the City Council on Thursday to stop the demolition.
The decision means the mural will be the last remaining trace of the Intermountain Indian School, except for a faint "I" etched into the rocky hillside above the campus.
"I cry every time I come here," said Karen Bagaii-Wilson, a Navajo who was born and raised at the school, where her mother taught and her father drove a bus. "This is all that I've known. My whole childhood, when people asked what my reservation was, I said the Intermountain School."
The school, which opened in 1950 on the grounds of a former military hospital, once housed 2,100 students in its barracks. It was one of about 150 federal boarding schools nationwide for native children.
For most, attendance was mandatory. Children as young as 5 were rounded up on reservations and sent to schools hundreds of miles away. When they arrived, their hair was cut and they were ordered not to speak their native languages.
"It was traumatic," said Dan Edwards, who attended the Chemawa Indian School in Salem, Ore., from the age of 8 to 13 and is now director of Ethnic Studies at the University of Utah. "For little children, it was really hard."
The Brigham City school, which first taught only Navajos and later became the Intermountain Intertribal School, was one of the best, Edwards said. Students were taught a few native traditions and parents were allowed to visit. And there were Indian teachers, including Houser, a Chiricahua Apache who arrived to teach art in 1951.
By then, Houser had already exhibited his work at the New York World's Fair and the National Gallery of Art and had painted a set of murals at the Department of the Interior building in Washington. Houser was given the National Medal of the Arts by President George Bush in 1992, two years before Houser died.
In 1954, he painted the gymnasium mural in the bright terra-cotta colors of the Southwest. At about the same time, Houser also painted a Navajo family on horseback in the adjacent auditorium, which was torn down soon after the school closed in 1984.
When the school shut down, the city turned part of campus into a golf course and sold the rest to Petersen's company. Cape Advisors converted some of the dorms into townhouses but plans to tear down the rest and build a mix of homes and apartments.
Houser's son, Bob Haozous, said the mural may be more important than the 12,000 drawings in the foundation's archives because it was done for the Indian children. The red buttes reminiscent of Monument Valley, the streaking herd of mustangs and the bright turquoise of the rider's headband would have reminded the students of home, said Haozous, who retook his family's Apache name.
"The fact that he painted this scene of Navajo people in their own environment, for these students who weren't allowed to speak their own language or have their own medicine men is just so amazing to me," he said.