D. Robert Carter

In late July 1847, segments of Brigham Young's Vanguard Company quickened their westward pace, anxious to enter the Great Basin and find a peaceful home. Nowadays during June and July, an increasing number of vehicles speed eastward over I-80 traveling from the Great Basin into Wyoming as the converts of concussion complete their yearly pyrotechnical pilgrimage to the nearest fireworks stand in the Cowboy State.

Professional pyrotechnical shows often bring joy to holiday audiences. Fiery flower bouquets in the sky well-nigh make sensitive women swoon. Earsplitting explosives elicit high fives from macho males.

Unfortunately, when used by individuals, fireworks also have a downside. They sometimes injure, maim or destroy, especially when they fall into the hands of those who are ill prepared to use them -- the boys and young men who have inherited their father's fondness for things that go boom. Through the years, many youngsters and property owners have suffered the consequences of carelessness with fireworks.

Threat of fires caused by fireworks motivated many Utah towns and cities to pass early laws meant to protect property owners from the boys of brimstone. Section 221 of the 1877 Revised Ordinances of Provo City reads, in part:

"Every person who shall ... set off any firecracker, rocket, torpedo, squib or other fireworks in any of the streets or public grounds of the city, without permission from the Mayor, Chief of Police or City Inspector ... is guilty of an offense, and liable to a fine in any sum not exceeding twenty-five dollars, and for all damages."

This law, and others like it, did not inhibit all fireworks fiends. In 1877, the very year Provo passed its law against unrestricted use of fireworks, L.R. Jenson's son took a powder flask to his father's cattle corral in Spring Lake and ignited its contents. The Deseret News reported this small explosion set fire to the stack yard "damaging property to the amount of $100."

The next year, Provo's Daily Enquirer told of a similar misfortune suffered by Major S. Thompson and Thomas C. Martell of Spanish Fork. Little boys playing with fireworks set off a blaze that consumed Thompson's shed and barn, in addition to Martell's stables, outhouses, wagon, hay and sundry property.

American Fork's business district narrowly escaped what might have been a major fire caused by fireworks on the evening of July 4, 1904. The Salt Lake Tribune reported, "A small boy with several giant firecrackers mutilated the front of the Doan barber shop, and but for the prompt action of bystanders a conflagration was narrowly averted in the heaviest business part of the town."

In recent years, careless use of fireworks in our foothills and mountains has resulted in costly wildfires and the loss of valuable vegetation that feeds our wildlife and protects our watershed by inhibiting erosion.

Faithful subscribers to the "Big Bang Theory" have also suffered their share of bodily injury and even death. William Nixon, one of Provo's promising young men, stepped bravely up to an improperly overloaded cannon on July 24, 1855, and unhesitatingly lit the fuse. The resulting explosion earned him a hard-to-swallow dose of immortality and a never-ending residence in eternity.

The March 23, 1864, edition of the Deseret News contains the obituary of one Hans Peter Olsen, son of Hans Peter and Ingeborg Katrine Olsen. The newspaper lists his cause of death as "the explosion of a bombshell."

Homemade disasters

Many problems resulted when boys tried to manufacture their own fireworks. In 1884, two Payson youths, 12-year-old William A. Powell and his brother David, aged 8, got the urge to make their own sparklers. The boys never dreamed they, themselves, would become Roman candles.

The brothers waited for a day when their parents were both gone, climbed to the top of the kitchen cupboard and brought down their father's powder flask. In order "to see the powder sparkle," the boys poured a little powder from the flask onto a few live coals in the kitchen cookstove. The spring on the flask's cap was rather stiff, so William held the container in both hands and pressed open the cap lever with both thumbs as young David peered into the glowing bowels of the stove.

The boys who wanted to see sparkles got more than they bargained for -- they saw stars. The trail of powder ignited, and quick as a flash, it burned its way up into the powder flask which then exploded. The blast nearly tore William's thumbs off and scorched his face. The flash of the powder also badly singed David's face, and the clothing of both boys caught fire.

The Deseret News reported the boys quickly extinguished their burning clothes when they "ran out of doors immediately and rolled in the snow."

Witnesses notified Dr. Greer, who stitched the wounds on William's hand and treated the boys' burns. It is highly unlikely, after this experience, that the brothers ever developed a strong urge to become pyromaniacs.

Smoot's chaser

In his autobiography, Abraham Owen Smoot IV told of an incident with fireworks that could have easily cost him his life and destroyed several outbuildings on the Madsen farm in Lake View.

Smoot became fast friends with Herbert, Robert and Alfred Madsen and visited their father's farm frequently. One day while playing at the Madsen farm, Owen and Herb amused themselves by making what Smoot called in the jargon of the times, a "chaser." The two friends contrived their homemade fireworks by filling a soda straw with gunpowder, and then they took it to the privacy of a small shed to test fire it.

After the boys lit both ends of the straw, that ordinary object performed extraordinary gyrations. It flitted and hopped about the shed, leaving a trail of sparks behind it. The "chaser" spun around and around the inside of the shed and caught Owen by surprise when it jumped into the open powder bag he still held in his hand.

A bedazzling explosion illuminated the outbuilding. Miraculously, the small shed did not burst into flames, but the powder flash blinded the blast-stricken buddies for a few moments. When their sight returned, pain accompanied it. Smoot recalled their scorched faces "began to pain as only powder burns can."

The burns took several weeks to heal and Smoot felt lucky to have both eyes and no scars. He later wrote, "To me this experience was very valuable, for I have never played around with gun powder since then."

Cans that go boom

As one might suspect, boys manufactured many of their homemade fireworks to use during the two July holidays. Just after the turn of the 20th century, the homemade fireworks of choice appear to have been small cans filled with black powder. Boys ignited these cans by lighting a fuse or simply by throwing a match into the can.

While rehearsing for July 4th, George Hickman, a 12-year-old Provo boy, set fire to powder he had placed in a small can. Instead of the powder just flashing, it caused the container to explode. The eruption of the powder blackened Hickman's face, and a fragment from the can struck him on the chin, causing an ugly gash. Provo doctors Taylor and Robison closed the wound with several stitches.

Martin Steiner and Frank Ballard lit their powder cans with much more drastic results. Steiner, an 8-year-old Provo boy, had seen older males put powder in cans and ignite it, and he thought he would try the trick. Steiner lit the powder can, and sadly, he left the scene of the explosion with a lacerated face that contained only one eye.

Ballard, who had seen his 16th year, was a resident of the railroad town of Tucker in Spanish Fork Canyon. He was not satisfied with an ordinary tin full of powder. In the process of working off a great load of patriotism, Ballard created a veritable bombshell by filling an oyster can with gunpowder and small rocks. When he detonated his creation, jagged fragments from the can and a number of pebbles sliced through Tucker's throat, killing him almost instantly.

Hazard to your health

A cigar box provided a little less lethal variation of the homemade tin can powder bomb. In order to construct this bang box, boys simply cut small holes in two sides of the box; one hole acted as a vent, and the other contained a fuse. Then the apprentice blaster put powder in the box, lit the fuse, stood back gleefully and watched that emblem of evil explode.

In 1895, a rather ironic incident involving a loaded cigar box occurred in Provo. That year the LDS Utah Stake held a conference just prior to July 24. Concerning this series of meetings, the Daily Enquirer informed it readers: "One very fruitful subject that the stake presidency of late have been teaching, has been the proper care of the young people." Stake President Reed Smoot admonished the audience to keep close watch on their children and not let them run wild.

The very next day, a Sunday, Mrs. Eliza Singleton was called out of conference to care for her young son Roy, who had been injured in an accident. He and some of the neighborhood boys were engaged in unsupervised Sabbath shenanigans when they decided to fire off some gunpowder in a cigar box.

When the fuse failed to ignite the powder box, Roy followed a course of action commonly taken on Sundays. He kneeled down and thoughtfully examined the problem. While he peeked into the hole on one side of the box, another boy began to blow into the hole on the other side of their creation. The results were illuminating for Roy. A bright blast rent the air and blackened the boy's face. Luckily, he left the site of the accident in possession of his eyesight, although it was impaired for days.

An embarrassed Mrs. Singleton likely took advantage of the situation to lecture her offspring on the impropriety of tampering with fire and brimstone on Sundays.

Professional works

Boys found professionally manufactured fireworks to be dangerous also. During the early 1900s, youths loved what was called a firecracker or torpedo cane, which was loaded with large, loud caps. Each time the boy struck the end of the cane on the ground, a cap exploded.

Apparently, it was important to follow the manufacturer's instructions for operating the cane and to refrain from inventing original methods of detonating the caps. Harold Gates, the teenaged son of Provo residents Mr. and Mrs. Jacob F. Gates, accidentally, or otherwise, struck the side of his firecracker cane on a hard object while celebrating just prior to the Fourth of July 1903.

The Deseret Evening News related the consequences: "The whole magazine exploded at once, tearing the flesh off his hand and arms." Surprisingly, the newspaper expressed the following opinion about the boy's wounds: "It is not believed the injury will have any serious results. "

The July 27, 1904, Deseret Evening News contained the story of Albert, the inventive son of Provo merchant, Arthur J. Southwick. The lad was not satisfied with the volume of noise created by the explosion of a single cap from the torpedo cane. After mulling over the matter at some length, he thought of a method that would fire several caps at a time.

Albert took a number of large caps from his "walking repeater" and loaded the ammunition into the bottom of a bicycle pump. Then grasping the pump handle firmly in his right hand, he forcefully rammed the pump piston downward onto the powder caps.

The creative lad's experiment proved successful -- a little too successful, in fact. When the piston hit the caps, it produced a violent explosion that shot the metal piston rod through the top of the pump and also through the fleshy part of Albert's hand between the index finger and the second finger. In passing, it tore the flesh off his fingers quite severely. Luckily, when Dr. Robison treated the wound, he ascertained it would not be necessary to amputate the injured fingers.

During times gone by, as well as in the present, many practical jokes involving fireworks have resulted in injury. Fourteen-year-old Virgil Baum, son of Mr. and Mrs. Lafe Baum of Pleasant View, nearly lost his life as a result of a thoughtless practical joke perpetrated on July 4, 1924.

Just before noon, Virgil and a group of boys walked up 400 West toward festivities being held in North Park. One of the youthful revelers sneaked up behind Virgil and dropped a lighted firecracker into his hind pocket -- a prank that could cause severe brain injury in a teenager.

When the cracker exploded, it set fire to Virgil's clothes. Unfortunately, young Baum carried some sulphur in his pocket, likely intending to manufacture a stink bomb later in the afternoon. The sulphur ignited and burned with a hot, blue flame.

Temporarily unnerved by the firecracker blast and the resulting fire, Virgil finally regained enough presence of mind to roll around in a nearby ditch until he doused the flames. The Sunday Herald announced Virgil was "seriously although not fatally burned." The newspaper said the flames badly burned his body from his knees to his abdomen, "large patches of skin being burned off his body."

Onlookers helped Virgil to the nearby home of Mr. and Mrs. John Fechser where Mrs. Fechser covered the boy's burns with soda and wrapped him in a sheet. Good Samaritans took Virgil to the office of Dr. H.S. Pyne, where the physician treated the victim's wounds for more than two hours. Although he suffered intense pain, Virgil recovered.

Gone in 60 seconds

In 1882, Pleasant Grove's modest July 24 celebration ended with a flurry of excitement. A large, expectant crowd gathered on the town square to see a fireworks display that capped a day of celebration. The finale soon presented itself in a rather unorthodox manner.

The crowd included a number of juveniles, who apparently became impatient for Pleasant Grove's pyrotechnical program. Some of them tossed lighted firecrackers into the box where the town's fireworks were stored. What city officials intended to be a show that would last, perhaps, a quarter of an hour or more was unceremoniously completed in a number of seconds. A rapid succession of explosions occurred, and skyrockets flew willy-nilly, observers rarely being obliged to lift their eyes heavenward to see them.

Buckeye, Pleasant Grove's correspondent to the Salt Lake Herald, reported: "A large sky rocket struck Miss Flora Harvey upon her leg, below the knee, inflicting a painful wound, besides burning her clothing. The young lady received a severe shock to her whole system. Mrs. B.W. Driggs, who was standing near, had her garments badly burned."

Not letting his composure slip one degree, Buckeye calmly reported, "With the above exception, the celebration was a complete success."

It would appear that even though Utah County's early fireworks were not nearly as expensive, extravagant and elaborate as those we witness today during celebrations of the 4th and 24th of July, local youths knew how to get the biggest bang for their buck.