Late in the evening of Jan. 3, 1950, Park City’s volunteer firefighters were summoned by the haunting wail of the whistle at City Hall. Fire had broken broke out at the Saint Mary of the Assumption Catholic Church at the top of Park Avenue. Battling 18-below-zero temperatures, they managed to keep the fire from spreading to nearby buildings. However, flames soon broke through the roof of the church, engulfing the entire structure. “Historical Church Destroyed,” The Park Record declared in its next issue. Duane Hunt, then the bishop of the Salt Lake City diocese that includes Park City, had misgivings about rebuilding the church. A strike had recently shut down three of Park City’s major mines, including the Silver King. About 700 men were out of work. He could see Park City becoming just another abandoned mining camp. But the Silver King’s 35-year-old chief engineer disagreed. Jim Ivers — whose grandfather had once donated $10,000 toward the construction of the Cathedral of the Madeleine in Salt Lake City — argued that this was the wrong time to deprive the struggling mining families of a place of worship. Bishop Hunt eventually relented. “He said, ‘I’ll authorize the church if you take charge,’” Ivers told me in a 1997 interview. “So … we got together a crew, and we hired out miners who were out on strike, hired them for a dollar an hour.” The church’s stone walls survived the fire. The pews, charred but intact, were encased in a big block of ice. The crew first capped the walls with concrete, keeping it warm with heat channeled from the parish house next door. In the meantime, in his office in the Silver King boardinghouse, Ivers designed a set of steel scissor trusses to support the new roof. “We got this steel company out of Salt Lake to build them at cost,” he said. With no money to hire a crane, they used a pneumatic hoist from the Silver King to drag the trusses into position. Al Carter, a carpenter at the Silver King, led the crew building the new roof. “As soon as they got the roof up, we turned the heat up again, melted that ice real fast,” Ivers said. “So, yeah, the pews that are there are the same pews that were there then.” The Jan. 30 issue of Newsweek magazine included a story on the church’s resurrection. Utah correspondent Jack Goodman described a scene in which striking miners of various Christian denominations were working side by side with members of mine management. Sympathetic Newsweek readers contributed $1,200 which, Ivers recalled, was more than the insurance money. On June 25, 1950, Bishop Hunt drove up from Salt Lake City to dedicate the resurrected church. But Ivers was not around to enjoy it. With the mines closed down, he and his family had moved on, to an iron-mining operation in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. By the time Ivers returned to Park City in the early 1960s, the old mining camp had begun its renaissance as a destination ski resort. In 1965 he was named president of United Park City Mines, overseeing not only the remaining underground operations but also the new Treasure Mountains (now Park City Mountain) resort. During his five-year tenure, he began looking for a buyer for the resort, a search that ultimately led to Royal Street Corporation of New Orleans. As that renaissance brought new people to the area, Park City’s churches outgrew their small chapels on Park Avenue and began to build spacious new houses of worship at the edge of town. Jim Ivers III in front of St. Mary’s stained glass window, 1999. Credit: Photo courtesy of Pat Cone When St. Mary’s started planning a new church, Ivers again played a leading role. It began with a chance encounter with Bishop Joseph Federal, Duane Hunt’s successor. Bishop Federal asked Ivers if he would help find a couple of acres for the new building. “I said, ‘Well, bishop, I’ll do better than that. I’ll give you some.’ So I made the commitment to give them a couple of acres,” he said. That land was on the corner of S.R. 224 and White Pine Canyon Road, not far from his house. As the plans developed, that couple of acres grew to eight. An elegant new structure was completed in August 1997. This time, when the church was dedicated, Ivers was around to enjoy it. Ivers was also still around when a statue of him — representing Park City’s mining legacy — was unveiled on Main Street two years later. He died in May 2000. The simple stone church at the top of Park Avenue isn’t used much anymore. But those steel trusses still stand as a quiet reminder of a time when miners and managers set aside their differences in an act of faith. Be sure to check out the museum website for our upcoming lectures and tours! David Hampshire is a Park City Museum researcher. The post Way We Were: The patron of Saint Mary’s appeared first on Park Record. ...read more read less