MANTI — It's not as well known an icon for Manti as the Mormon temple, but it stands as a symbol for the same industry, faith and hope.
The two-story vernacular-style John Patten Jr. home at 97 W. 300 North is built of pioneer rubble rock — oolite limestone from a nearby quarry — stuck together with crude mud mortar, the earliest and most primitive form of stone masonry.
To this day, architects still debate whether the house is of drywall construction, meaning no cement was used, or whether the binding material has simply washed away.
The home, constructed in 1854 and in continuous use until 1976, is a museum, a gift to the city of Manti from the Utah State American Revolution Bicentennial Commission in 1976, with supplementary help from private donors.
The home, which has a full basement and upper floor, is a Utah historic site and a national historic site. It served as a home to Patten and his two wives and their 13 children. (As was an accepted custom of the time, after the death of his first wife, Candance Smith, Patten married her sister Emily.)
On the main floor is a pump organ, a baby bed that turns into a stroller, an old sacrament tray with a heavy common cup for the water, a copper kettle, a spinning wheel, and a grinding stone found on the property.
In the attic are rag rugs, beds strung together with rope and a trunk that came with the Mormon Battalion.
In the basement is a huge sandstone slab, about 3-by-4 feet and hollowed out on the top surface to hold water. The slab served as his refrigeration system. It's believed Patten built the house around the stone.
Though not many of the thousands of artifacts and simple furnishings are original, they are all period and bear silent witness to a time when money was scarce and creativity had to step in as a solution to some of life's problems and needs.
"The Song of the Century," a local history, says that Patten built the first ditching machine, hay baler, hay derrick and threshing machine in Manti. And his threshing machine was unique: the first one to separate the wheat from the chaff.
Patten, brother to David Wyman Patten, an early apostle who was martyred at the Battle of Crooked River in Missouri, was an early convert to Mormonism who later apostatized. He came to Utah in 1850 and settled in Manti. He helped built Manti's first fort and witnessed the 1855 peace treaty with the area's Ute Indians. He was a representative in the Utah Territorial Legislature, was the sheriff of Sanpete County and a member of the City Council.
He was a successful farmer. He built the Patten reservoir and Patten Ditch, a frothy, open stream along Manti's First East that is now safely conveyed in covered pipe — an irrigation system which conveys water to farmland five miles north of Manti.
The Sanpete Ranger District has announced summer plans to rebuild about two miles of the Patten Trail, making it safe and more visually exciting while providing better access to the upper reaches of Manti Canyon.
The trail was blazed by Patten more than a century ago as an entryway to big-tree country high on Manti Mountain. The wagons brought fir and pine logs down the often steep and rugged cut to the mills below.
Patten spotted one location, built a dam to impound a stream and created what today is called Patten Pond. His trail crosses the dam, moves up the mountain to intersect the equally famous Sheep Trail, then goes on to cross Burnt Flat and rejoin the Manti Canyon Road near Milk Falls.
The Manti Irrigation Co. also has done some work on the Patten Trail, and the hope is that one day the whole 12-mile loop will provide a high-adventure ride for people on horses, four-wheelers and bikes.
"We still call it Patten Country," says Ned Madsen, who ran cattle in the canyon for 50 years.
If you go ...
What: Patten Family Honor Days, Sept. 24-25, with lunch, program, cemetery visit
Who: All descendants of John Patten Sr. and his wives, Abigail Stiles and Hannah Ingersoll, are invited to the "Settlement of Sanpete" Honor Day Tribute.
More details: Call Rebecca Tollefson at 435-835-4425 or visit pioneerheritagecenter.org
e-mail: haddoc@desnews.com