These outsiders are an unglamorous fish known as carp, a non-native species that now accounts for more than 90 percent of the fish in Utah Lake. They represent a considerable commercial resource that just can’t seem to find a market. If only people could be convinced to eat the homely carp, an economic boom could ensue.

But carp remain under-used. Commercial fishermen and state wildlife officials have struggled for a century to establish a local market, but their efforts for the most part have had little success.

The people of Utah formed an interest in carp cultivation as early as 1851, almost 20 years before the fish were imported to North America from Europe. In November of that year, the Deseret News published an article describing how farmers in France successfully raised carp in small, shallow ponds. Astoundingly, some of these pools yielded 4,000 to 6,000 carp in several years. The article touted carp as a good table fish that provided farmers with a cash crop as well as a wholesome food for families.

Interested parties in the eastern United States imported carp in 1870. Within six years, entrepreneurs had transported the fish to California via the transcontinental railroad and begun commercially raising them for America’s dinner tables.

Carp come to Utah

In 1880, the carp bug bit Utah, and a Deputy United States Fish Commissioner promised to transport free carp to Utah as early as 1881. The commissioner required interested parties to fill out a written application, pay for the shipping container and cover freight expenses. The price per fish ran between 35 and 85 cents, depending on size and how many fish fit into the container.

The first consignment of carp arrived in Salt Lake City in December 1881. Local newspapers mentioned the fish’s arrival but offered no information concerning who received them or where they went.

In February 1882, four more cans of carp arrived. Three of the four fish recipients were from Utah County. Jacob Houtz owned a flour mill in Springville, and he put the carp into his large millpond. Jefferson Eastmond, an American Fork miller, and James Allred, a fellow resident of American Fork, received their fish the same day as Houtz. It is likely that Eastmond also put his carp into his millpond. Allred may have constructed a pond especially for his consignment.

Through the years, Jacob Houtz has been identified as the original source of Utah Lake’s carp. It is said that a spring flood washed some of the fish out of Houtz’s millpond, and they worked their way down Spring Creek and into Provo Bay and eventually into the lake.

It is also likely that carp owned by Eastmond and Allred escaped from their ponds and swam downstream into the north end of the lake. Once the mature carp spawned in the millponds, it would have been virtually impossible to keep the small fry from getting loose.

Many flattering accounts of carp appeared in Utah newspapers in the early years, and people generally felt optimistic about the fish’s future. By 1883, very few carp had yet reached the fish markets, but the newspapers told their readers what they could look forward to.

Subscribers to the Salt Lake Daily Herald read this: “In the frying pan [carp] is a joy long to be remembered. … They are excellent brain food, and that kind of thing is very much needed in more places than one.” Many correspondents claimed their flavor equaled that of trout, bass and shad.

The number of carp in Utah Lake multiplied so rapidly that by 1889 men seined them from the lake every day. When Peter Madsen made a 600-yard haul with a 200-foot seine late in 1892, he caught 300 carp and only 200 sucker and chub. The carp weighed from 2 to 9 pounds each.

The carp population continued to grow, and by 1895 fishermen were catching 2,000 pounds per haul of the seine. Wholesalers were shipping a large number of the fish out of the county. Tons of carp went to Salt Lake City every week, and an elevated demand for carp in mining towns and in the villages of southern Utah expanded the market.

Culinary questions

Carp may have taken possession of Utah Lake, but they were far less successful at winning over the palates of Utah’s people. Some residents seemed to like their taste. In 1888, Mormon leader Wilford Woodruff ate carp taken from Peter Madsen’s fish pond and “found it quite a fair fish.”

Such rave reviews did not spring forth from most Utahns. In 1899 the Deseret News lamented that when the government encouraged the propagation of carp in Utah, officials advertised it as a highly esteemed and very important pond fish. But “when the testing and tasting time came, they were found to be an inferior fish, compared with many others and many are now turning their noses up at them.”

The Salt Lake Herald reported that carp were greasy and lacked flavor. What flavor they did have, the newspaper stated, was like mud.

The editor of Springville’s newspaper, the Independent, expressed a derisive opinion concerning the culinary quality of carp. He conceded that some Germans who lived in the area thought carp was good food, but speaking for himself and what he deemed to to be the consensus of the general public, he said of the carp:

“It is very difficult, however, to convince the balance of the people that there is any means known to scientific cookery which will render them fit for the table. The flesh is strong and exudes a stench which is almost nauseating to the general run of people.”

Many suggestions were made to overcome the bad press and persuade more people to eat carp. The Salt Lake Tribune proposed that much of the “prejudice against the edible qualities of carp” resulted from eating them during warm weather instead of during the cool seasons. The newspaper also advised people that carp “should be thoroughly cleaned and put through several changes of cold, pure and slightly salt water before cooking.”

A.M. Musser, Utah’s fish commissioner, agreed with this tip and added that the carp was not a “pan fish.” It was not meant to be fried, but should be baked or boiled.

Two suggestions on how to market carp — canning and curing — caught the attention of Utah County entrepreneurs. Few details of these two schemes exist, but there is enough to provide a brief overview.

In 1896, A.M. Musser suggested curing or pickling carp as the Germans did. If the procedure were followed, Musser believed that surely “50 to 80 or 100 tons a year … might be sold at a profit.”

Hoping that Musser was correct, a Provo resident of German descent gave the fish commissioner’s suggestion a try in 1897. He soaked the carp in a solution that made it easy to remove the skin. After removing the carp’s scaly hide, he smoked the fish. When he distributed the cured fish among the people, many were “charmed with carp as an article of diet.” Some predicted “that in the future smoked carp will be an entree upon Provo menus.”

But the charm of eating cured carp faded, and the whole project went up in smoke.

Then in 1909, former Eureka mining magnate John Beck was drawn to a new scheme. He began talking about the possibilities of canning carp and marketing the product for 5 or 6 cents per pound.

Apparently, Beck did not establish a carp cannery, but Theodore Farley, manager of the Provo Canning Factory, experimented with canning carp. He found that one of the biggest problems was the carp’s numerous small bones. After testing and experimenting for months, he found that the right canning process solved the problem. It softened the bones similar to the way they “softened in salmon and other fish canned on the Columbia river and seacoast towns.”

Farley decided that he could market “Utah Lake Salmon” profitably. After the season for vegetable and fruit canning ended in the fall of 1912, he planned to make the switch to canning carp and continue the process through the winter. Nothing is known about the success of Farley’s project, although the fact that it is not mentioned in the newspaper again seems to indicate that he either failed to initiate the process or that it quickly failed.

Back in business

In 1916, capitalists established the Mountain Lake Fish Canning Company in Springville for the purpose of canning common fish. The company’s secretary, J.F. Green, operated an experimental plant in the city during that winter. The American Fork Citizen reported that the product was “tested by a number of people and invariably pronounced superior to imported canned fish. In the process of cooking, the small bones, which were so objectionable, “disappear entirely.”

Utah State Fish and Game Commissioner Fred W. Chambers said that if properly canned, Utah Lake’s common fish had “a flavor superior to the vaunted tuna.”

In February 1917, the Mountain Lake Fish Canning Company announced its intention to establish a fish canning plant near the mouth of Provo River. C.M. Poulsen, a representative of the company, claimed to have the backing of Provo’s Commercial Club, a forerunner of the Chamber of Commerce. When the Commercial Club denied any involvement with the canning company, the lid was apparently sealed on that project. The company built no cannery.

Industrialists were not quite ready to give up on the idea of canning common fish from Utah Lake. Early in November 1917, with World War I under way, J.W. “Jake” Parker, a prominent canner from Ogden, announced that the Utah Lake Fish Canning Company intended to build a $25,000 cannery close to Utah Lake’s Geneva Resort near where the defunct Geneva Steel Plant now rusts. This location placed the cannery a convenient distance from both the lake and the tracks of the Denver and Rio Grande Railway. The company planned “to supply Utah and neighboring states with an immense amount of canned fish to help out in the food conservation campaign.”

Government backs out

The Utah Lake Fish Canning Company built the cannery, and in the spring of 1918 it was ready for production. Frank A. Jugler, Jake Parker’s close friend, claimed that the company secured a government contract to provide canned carp for the allied armies during the closing stages of the war. The company had just loaded a boxcar full of canned fish when the armistice was declared in November of 1918.

Jugler said the government then refused to buy the fish and the company took the load to the Great Salt Lake and dumped it.

The factory stood empty for a number of years. Then in 1923, Parker converted it into a fruit and vegetable cannery. It ran successfully until the 1930s when it burned and was never replaced.

For most current Utah County people, the notion that carp can be good table fish died — some still say unjustifiably — even before Jake Parker’s canned carp met its ignominious end at the bottom of the Great Salt Lake.

Prejudices developed early and have dogged the carp through the 1900s and into the 21st century. To this day, carp remain much maligned, unable to overcome their reputation, deserved or not — an easy mark for derision among their more handsome and tasty cousins.

D. Robert Carter is a historian who lives in Springville. He recently completed two books — “Utah Lake: Legacy,” and “Founding Fort Utah: Provo’s Native Inhabitants, Early Explorers, and First Year of Settlement.” Both are available at the BYU Bookstore, Heritage Book in Provo, and the Read Leaf in Springville. They are also available at Benchmark Books and Ken Sanders Rare Books in Salt Lake City. Copies are also available from the author, 489-8256.

This story appeared in The Daily Herald on page B2.