Saturday, February 21, 2015





You know you're from Juab County...... if you have ever been to Burraston Ponds, which is between Nortonville and Mona. There is no known record of who has skinny dipped there(nor should there be), but I feel sure there is at least two people in the first picture that didn't. On the far left with the white shawl is Elizabeth(Lizzie) Tolley Jones, and the one in white in the very middle is Lucy Garrett Sanders. They are having a picnic at Burraston Ponds. I put the old photo under a microscope, and it appears there are two others on the left side of Lizzy. It looks like one is Jane Tolley Jones, who is the sister of Lizzy, and they were seldom apart on family outings or in church. There are ten people in the time warped photo. The second photo is of Lizzie Jones, and the third photo is of her glasses which I am presently wearing to type this. Now for the rest of the story-about a quarter century ago I was doing a historical interview with Winnefred Burraston Gee of Santaquin. She was the mother of Nephi's "Killer" Gee and his brother Ted Gee, who was my buddy. Information is that it was her family-Richard Burraston who settled that area during the Civil War, but the family lived in the Goshen/Elberta area. When Utah became a State, the Burraston family donated the land to the State, as long as they used it for the public. Now, who may have actually skinny dipped at Burraston...perhaps it was Father Esclante who is reported to have camped and bathed there in 1776. If you were to talk to others as I have, there was an indication that Marshall Orrin Porter Rockwell(bodyguard of Joseph Smith and Brigham Young) may have also bathed there after he had caught up with a desperado in Juab County, and the bad guy "accidently" drowned at Burraston before the body was taken back to Salt Lake.

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