The thirty-thousand-year history of Grandview Hill

As part of the 40th anniversary celebration, the 17th Ward’s primary invited four longtime residents to tell the children about life on the hill in the olden days. This was the talk I wanted to give to my ward’s primary sharing time. The primary president gave me five minutes and this, when I read it through dry run with a timer took twelve minutes. So I reduced the 30000 years to 100 years.

However, for the Grandview South community celebration blog, I give unto you, the original text,

THE THIRTY THOUSAND YEAR HISTORY OF GRANDVIEW HILL . . .
and the Soulier Family's place in that history, written for a Primary audience who knows street names and the concept of past years. Submitted by Rick Soulier

Sunday 24 July 2011

Thirty thousand years ago--a mere tick in the geological clock--this place where we live, this Grandview Hill was the end of a river that emptied into a huge Lake. Utah Lake and the Great Salt Lake are the only remains left of that lake. We do not know what the creatures living around this lake called it, because they left no written record. Scientists now call that lake long gone “Lake Bonneville.”

800 years ago [c 1200], the people in my Soulier family did not speak English, they spoke old French. They started farming in the foothills of the Alps Mountain Range in Europe. They grew crops in the rocky land and herded their animals up mountains and down the hills. For at least 400 years, the Soulier family lived in a village called Saint Germain.

My ancestors belonged to the Waldesian Religion. The rulers of Savoy and The Piedmont sometimes kept them safe. Eventually so did the Kings of Italy. President Brigham Young sent Apostle Lorenzo Snow to the Waldesian villages in the early 1850s to preach the restored gospel to them.

118 years ago [1893], my great-grandfather James Soulier left Italy with his family. Earning a living and making money was hard to do in Italy then. Many Italians and French left their countries for better lives here the United States. For the Soulier family, it was the old story--they arrived by ship at Ellis Island in New York City where they got certified. Then they moved to a place where they knew someone from their village. That someone they knew lived here in Provo, Utah.

100 years ago [1911], my grandfather and grandmother, Henry and Lisa Soulier, bought a farm and built a brick home at what is now call 85 East 2000 South Street in Orem. Neither the street name nor Orem existed then.

Henry and Lisa planted peach and apricot trees and raised a family of four boys and a girl. They watered the trees and plants, trimmed them, and harvested fruit from them. They sold peaches and apricots. They grew grape vines and made grape juice. Very old grape juice.

My father Clarence Soulier started to milk the family cows at age six, and his father also taught him how to prune and water trees and pick the fruit. His father taught him to grow grapes. His Future Farmers of America teacher (Lincoln School, Orem) taught him to grow raspberries.

74 years ago [1937], my father bought a farm at 1650 West 1460 North Street Grandview Hill. Westridge Elementary School and the Rotary Park are now found where the farm once was. My father planted apple, pear, and peach trees, grape rows, raspberry patches, gardens of flowers and vegetables on his farm. He constructed farm buildings. Father trimmed the trees in winter. He sprayed the trees with stuff to get rid of the bugs in summer. He watered them. He and his workers picked the fruit in Septembers and Octobers.

70 years ago [c 1941], Father planted that row of tall old tall pine trees east of Westridge school and north of the parking lot. The pine trees were all about this size (Rick indicates the size of seedlings, not more than 12 inches tall).

63 years ago, [18 July 1949], Father married my mother Cora Herman.

61 years ago [January 1950], he built our first home. The address was 1650 West 1460 North St.--where the Rotary Park restroom now stands. His barn stood about 200 feet north of the last pine tree of the big row of pine trees.

60 plus years ago {c 1942], my father built a white wood building that he called a “packing shed.” It stood where the tennis courts now stands at the corner of 1500 West and 1460 North. In that building, he and his workers (including me) sorted the fruit by size using a noisy machine. Big. Medium. Small. Tiny. We put the fruit in baskets and boxes, and placed them in big refrigerated cooler rooms to stay fresh until they sold. I helped sell fruit when I was a boy.

I arrived here 55 years ago [September 1956]. 1460 North Street did not have sidewalks when I walked to and from Grandview School. The neighborhood had a few homes, and many open fields where kids played. Other farmers owned fruit trees and fields on Grandview Hill, too.

My father liked to do concrete in the spring, so I would help him with those projects. In spring we would burn the dead old weeds along ditch banks so that water could flow to the trees. I sometimes drove tractors and trucks and watered trees when I got older.

In 1969, Provo City School District and Provo City bought my father’s farm for an elementary school and public park. Father farmed the land until 1977. The city and the district allowed people to cut down the trees for fire wood in November 1977. Westridge Elementary School opened for its first students in August 1980.

41 years ago when my family moved into the house where I now live [April 1970], the neighborhood consisted of 1460 North, 1400 North, 1750 West Streets. The beginning of 1500 West Street was a dirt lane lined with wild roses and tall shade trees and fruit trees. 1320 North Street was a dirt road with an open ditch for irrigation water and no sidewalk.

The Souliers started joining the Church one at a time beginning in the 1930s. When I was a baby and toddler [1956-1961], I attended church in an older chapel on Columbia Lane, Provo. It belonged to the Church of Jesus Christ of latter-day Saints then. Today the Baptist Church owns it.

When I was a cunning little shaver [1961-1968], I attended church in the large tan church on 1350 West Street. My father baptized me in that building’s font [July 1964]. The church held Primary meetings in the middle of the week in the afternoon after school. The primary used The Articles of Faith as a frame of study. I remember that on our birthdays, boys and girls contributed coins to a bank in the shape of Primary Children’s Hospital. We sent that money to the hospital for the care of the poor.

39 years ago when I was a priest [November 1972], the ward moved into this building. At that time The Church held Sunday school classes separately for both the adults and the children. In fact, I remember blessing the sacrament for the Junior Sunday School at a desk placed to the podium’s left.

Today, I remember with love my grandparents and parents--all gone. Our first house now sits on 2100 West Street. My father’s packing shed now sits on 2000 South Street in Orem. New owners moved them in the 1970s. I remember the open fields and the fruit trees, white with blossoms in springs, and glorious in gold and orange color in Octobers past.

The past is only the present a second ago. When you get good at writing, I hope you will write down what you do here in your homes and church so that the children of the future will remember you too.