Cumorah Gordan Holdaway (CH), 395 S
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Utah Valley Orchards Interviewee: Cumorah Gordan Holdaway (CH), 395 S. Holdaway Rd. Orem, Utah 84058 Interviewer: April Chabries (AC) and Randy Astle (RA) Interview location: 395 S. Holdaway Rd. Orem, Utah 84058 Date: May 2, 2001 Note: Edited for clarity; NU=not understandable Overview 1. Ancestors: Charles and Elvira Crandall. Their youngest daughter is Cumorah’s mother. Her father is Curtis Gordon. 2. History of the old farm 3. Lots of farmers and people that we should contact. 4. Parks – Franklin / Covey area 5. Quaintness of the Depression era 6. Progression of the city 7. Wards and the old Green Church 8. Geneva Steel and its changes 9. More people that we should contact 10. The city in blossom in the Spring 11. Train, specifically the passenger line 12. Canneries 13. Rocky land 14. Farm animals 15. Schools in the area 16. SCERA 17. Sports 18. Everyone used to farm 19. People had time back then; today we’re in a hurry 20. Bobsled 21. There was no traffic then either 22. The old Stratton home 23. Early people worked hard to benefit the community 24. Selling their farm, which is not an orchard 25. Recreation 26. Halloween pranks 27. Again, good people worked hard for Orem 28. Attitudes of people today / kids don’t feel heritage / proud of Orem 29. POWs CH: My name is Cumorah Gordon Holdaway. I’m 72 years old, and I’ve lived in the Orem area all my life. My parents owned a dairy farm or a fruit farm. My grandparents Charles and Elvira Crandall came to Orem as homesteaders, as many farmers did in that very same time. I don’t know when that was exactly. When I was born in 1929, the Crandall farm had been divided. My grandfather had passed away, my grandmother was elderly, and they had divided up their farm to their five children. My mother was their youngest daughter. My Dad was Curtis Gordon, who had lived in Provo and came out to the farm when they married. The whole Crandall farm was in the area from 200 South, from 1000 East to 800 East in Orem, going north, and as it got to Center Street then it went east onto the brink of the hill overlooking Carterville Road up to 400 North. At Center Street going west it went to, I’m not sure exactly but probably to the canal, about 600 West and slanted off and went up to 200 North back to 800 East. The one sister, Sophia and her husband Ruben Pyne, had the farm to the west. Right next to that is the Crandall farm that goes across Center at 800 East on both sides. Their farm was from about 700 East up to 200 North, and crossed over 800 East. 800 East didn’t go through at that time so the farm was continuous. Their farm went over to 1000 East. My oldest Aunt Sarah and her husband Orsen Prestwich had the area east of 1000 East and north of Center Street to the brink of the hill and from there to up to 400 North. The farm that we had went from 200 South, where our family home was, and from 1000 East to 900 East straight up all the way to about 300 North. This was the Curtis and Minnie Crandall Gordon farm. So the whole family was right there all together. They helped each other when they had to spray and things. Eventually they got off by themselves, but it was a real family to-do. I didn’t mention the Crandalls that are there now. Their father’s name was Carson Crandall, his wife was Joy, and his oldest son is Merrill N. Crandall. We call him Sam. He’s always been Sam to us. He’s still there. His , Tim, is working with him on the farm. Most of those farms now are into development except the Sam Crandall farm. South of us was the Calder family, Ted and Melba Calder. Their children maintain that farm, and their son Vance lives on 400 South 900 East. He could probably give you some information because they’ve maintained their farm for a long time. In the River Bottoms was the Park family farm. They had a huge farm where Franklin Covey and the River Woods shopping center are now. The Provo River runs down through there. There’s also another canal where they got much of their irrigation water that is up a little bit higher under the brink of the hill, coming down from Orem. As you come over the hill from Orem on Center Street and Franklin Covey is right there, the canal is between Franklin Covey and the bottom of the hill. That water came out of the Deer Creek Reservoir and it supplied a lot of the irrigation water. When my father Curtis Gordon was a young man he came out to that farm to work, as a summer job, and got very much acquainted with that family to the point that he ended up living with them to finish going to school. He got involved in the LDS Church and that’s how my mother met him. AC: I noticed that there’s still a small orchard left in that area, is that still owned by the Parks? CH: I wouldn’t know that. I thought they’d probably sold all the property. But if you talk to Evelyn Park Neymer who lives in Pleasant Grove—it’s Dr. Richard Neymer—she would probably be able to tell you that. They used to grow beautiful strawberry and raspberry patches. When we got through picking our strawberries and raspberries on our place we sometimes went to their farm to pick or to my other aunt’s. We were picking berries everyday when the Holdaway, Cumorah 2 strawberries were on—lots of strawberries, lots of raspberries. Everybody had all kinds of fruit so that they had fruit being harvested all summer, and they weren’t big farms. I grew up in the Depression years, and we were poor, but I didn’t know we were poor. We had so much family activity and the Church; everybody was in the LDS Church. The Church was so prevalent that we had lots of fun together, all the families. At one time I prided myself that I knew every home in Orem. I certainly couldn’t do that down a street now. I have a hard time recognizing where the original homes were because things have changed so much. When I was a little girl, Orem State Street was still a dirt road. Then very soon they paved two lanes, one lane each direction, in the middle of it. Thank goodness somebody had the foresight to not build homes close to that street, because that street has always been that wide. The homes were built back, but that street was a two lane paved road for a long time. The church that we went to was the Sharon Ward church. The only other church in Orem was the Timpanogos** church down on 800 South and east of State Street, it’s still there. It’s been remodeled, added on to. Everybody calls it the “green church,” Orem’s green church. Then there was a ward—the Windsor Ward—that was in north Orem and took in some of Pleasant Grove or the Lindon Area. Our Sharon ward went from the brink of the hill up before we came down into Vineyard and to the brink of the hill down in, well, we even took the River Bottoms. The Park family was in our ward. Then the Edgemont Ward. The Pleasant View ward was north of the Brigham Young University football stadium and in our stake. The Lakeview ward was close to the lake, near Provo, and then our Vineyard area. There were seven wards. It was like that for a long time, until the steel plant came. They started to build the steel plant in 1941 when the war broke out. Then the whole area began to change. Everybody that lived here had fruit farms. The Bellows were another family that lived close in the area, south of Center Street and west of where my grandparents lived, kind of in the center there, over towards Center Street or State Street. They had a big farm. The Strattons had a big farm. Some of that family is still farming; their grandson Vern Stratton is still alive. Another big farm was the Gillmans’. They always specialized in apples. They had beautiful apples. Everybody loved the Gillman apples. The Kirks had beautiful apples too, but their farm wasn’t as big as the Gillmans’ farm. The Gillmans were from 1000 East to 800 East, up to the canal and all along that hillside up above the cemetery and to the west. They sold most of their farm to WordPerfect. In the springtime Orem was the most gorgeous place because everything was in blossom. There were homes dotted around, but it was gorgeous. I remember as a little girl hiking on an Easter hike up on the foothills and looking down and it was unbelievable, the pink and the white blossoms. It was a very simple life we had. We had a post office and we had the train, we called it the inter-urban train. I’m sure it went north of Salt Lake, I’m not sure how far, but it went to Nephi or maybe to Payson. We used that train and we had fun on it.