Letter from Dovie Lena (Bryant) Beavers to Pat Harris about Hog Hollow
Transcribed by Howard Bryant

               The old log cabin in hog hollow was used for a church as well as a school.  I remember a revival once before I was school age.  Maggie, Rose, and Fanny Sherrod and Mertie and Ada Wasrum all went to the alter one night and got saved.  There was shouting all over the place.  After this the Sherrod’s moved to Salt Lake City, UT.  The first winter there, Maggie tried to walk to a neighbor’s house on top of the huge drifts of snow.  The top crust broke and she fell through.  The snow covered her and she froze to death.
               When the canal was being dug, I would go with Grandpa Carrithers on his vegetable wagon selling vegetables, milk, butter, and eggs.  There was a long string of four and five room houses with electric lights built along the canal.  Before dad bought our house in Hog Hollow, we lived about three miles up from the canal.  I remember the draglines digging the big deep canal with no water in it.  I was 6 years old when we moved into our home in Hog Hollow.  This home was bought from Mr. Hall.  I was 7 years old when I started to school in the log house.  My first three teachers boarded with Mama.  Mrs. Allison, Mrs. Endy Brown.  I don’t remember the other teachers name.
               After the school was closed in Hog Hollow, we walked into Riverton to attend school.  Author South was my first teacher there.  The next on was a Mr. Robertson, in his 60’s or more.
               I was 10 years old when the canal was finished.  So it was started in 1900.  The Barnett family lived near us and I remember Mama and Mrs. Barnett sent me and May to a neighbor house to borrow some thread.  They had three teenage girls.  They asked me my name.  I thought my name was ugly so I wouldn’t tell them.  One of the girls got out an old pistol and threatened to kill me.  About that time, their mother came out and gave them all a whipping.
               Another thing I remember so well was two men shooting each other.  Their names were Shoat.  They killed each other.  This was talked a lot to Grandpa as we delivered vegetables.
               During the digging of the canal, a huge human skeleton was found or dug up from a hundred feet.  It was 8 feet tall.  It was put together and sent to a museum somewhere.  It was found between to layers of rock.
               I thought you might be interested in the things I remembered about the canal that Dad help to dig.

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