Privatization May Turn Utah Hamlet Into Reluctant Boomtown

Once a critical cog in the urbanization of the West, the tiny town of Dutch John is up for sale.

The move by the town’s federal owner, the Bureau of Reclamation, has drawn cautious optimism from some of the 175 residents and outright opposition from others. All recognize the future will bring a sharp break with the past.

“I’m afraid Dutch John is about to be changed,” says Milo McPherson, a controller and operator at Flaming Gorge Dam, built by Dutch John’s original residents.

Little in Dutch John appears to have changed since the dam was completed in 1964, and most of the 3,000 workers who spent six years building it moved on. Tucked neatly into the rugged Uinta Mountains a few miles from the Wyoming border, this well-manicured collection of tract homes and trailers seems ripped from another time.

‘Everybody Knows Everybody’

There is a school, a church, a community center, a baseball diamond, a few government buildings and a small airport. A single convenience store is the only visible commerce.

“It’s small. Everybody knows everybody. You can let your kids wander around. We’re in a beautiful area,” says John Morton, an electrician at the dam. “I love it.”

Though small, the town carries a big price tag for the federal government--nearly $900,000 a year to maintain the 47 homes it rents to employees. Money for the upkeep comes from electricity sales to municipal power companies along Utah’s populous Wasatch Front and elsewhere.

Other dam towns created by the bureau, like Page, Ariz., and Boulder City, Nev., were privatized decades ago. Others in Montana and Idaho were disassembled when their dams were completed.

So Dutch John is a relic of sorts, among the few remaining government-run villages tending the dams that watered and powered the rise of the urban West.

Some residents fear the government’s sale of the houses and land by October 2000 will bring unwanted growth and destroy the town’s prized seclusion.

“I think we’re going to get a couple of developers here and you might as well leave,” McPherson said. Like most residents, he is keenly aware of the scenic and recreational values of the land and the problems they may bring.

Dutch John--named for a mule trader of German, not Dutch, ancestry--sits alongside some of the West’s best fishing waters above and below the dam on the Green River. In the summer, fishing guides and rafting outfitters move into mobile homes along South Boulevard, swelling the town’s population to about 250.

“I’ve traveled everywhere in the world, and it’s the most unique place I can think of,” says Jim Knight, a Park City resident who plans to buy a home in two years when they are finally offered to the public.

Knight already summers in Dutch John, where his son is a fishing guide.

With Growth Come Opportunities

Craig Collett’s family runs the outfitting business his father opened after the town was born in 1958. His family also owns the Flaming Gorge Lodge, eight miles from Dutch John and the only inn within 50 miles.

That exclusivity could go when the town is privatized, but Collett isn’t worried, seeing Dutch John as a logical tourist haven.

“I think it will present . . . an opportunity for some growth,” he said. “Initially that may kind of hurt us, but in the long run it will help.”

A development plan commissioned by Daggett County and put together in consultation with Dutch John residents suggests limited development as a small fishing resort.

“Most people like it the way it is now. They didn’t want to see a lot of growth or development,” said Utah State University professor David Bell, the plan’s co-author. “I think they wanted just enough growth to justify some more services to make living there a little easier.”

James Briggs, county commission chairman, said the nonbinding plan would cap growth between 700 and 1,000 people. Although that wouldn’t make Dutch John a bustling metropolis, it could double the population of Utah’s smallest county.

To help the county absorb the cost of providing services to the town, the federal government will pay the county $300,000 a year for 15 years, said Ralph Becker, a state legislator and development planner who helped shape the federal law privatizing Dutch John.

Early this month, the county will hire a water treatment manager. Other services will follow.

Some wish privatization had come sooner. Postmaster Pat Gale lived in government housing for 32 years and would like to have stayed in town. But three years ago she and her husband, a 40-year dam employee, bought a home in one of two small clusters near Collett’s lodge.

“We felt like at the time it wasn’t bad to pay that little bit [of rent], but you pay rent for 25, 30 years and you don’t have anything to show for it,” Gale said.

Others have moved nearly 50 miles west to Manila or south to Vernal. Marcia Barber, who has taught at Flaming Gorge Elementary School for 20 years and been principal for five, has watched the student body shrink from 45 to just 26 as families moved out. Older students take an hourlong bus ride to Manila.

“I’d hate to see the town really shrivel up and become a ghost town,” Gale said.

Mike Busic, the dam’s administrative officer and de facto mayor of Dutch John, said the goal of privatization is to give employees a chance to build equity for when they leave their federal jobs.

But there may be a serious side effect. Inexpensive rent traditionally served as an employment lure for dam managers trying to cope with high turnover.

“I think this will just make it that much harder to get people to work here,” said Billy Elbrock, the dam’s maintenance supervisor.

Elbrock and others are also dismayed with preliminary government appraisals of their rental homes that range from $61,000 to $75,000.

“That may not sound like much to someone from Salt Lake, but where you have no facilities and you have to drive 100 miles round trip [to Vernal or Manila] and the houses are 40 years old, we thought that was a little high,” said John Morton, a dam electrician.

The homes themselves are small and basic, reflecting their utilitarian origin as temporary housing for construction workers. Renters complain of faulty wiring and plumbing, lead paint and asbestos.

“People on our income, they’re just pricing us out,” said Leon Rogina, a power plant mechanic. “Everyone I’ve talked to is disappointed.”

Bruce Snyder, the bureau’s realty officer, says residents should wait for final appraisals--due this month--before deciding the cost is too dear. And he denies that the homes are dilapidated.

“They have been very well maintained,” he said. “The condition of those homes is probably much better than any other [40-year-old] home you’ll find.”

Once appraisals are in, tenants will have 30 days to decide to buy and six months to arrange financing. The bureau will retain 15 homes to rent and will sell 21 vacant plots to employees who want to build or move in a trailer.

Heidi McManigal, a power plant technician, and her bureau employee husband hope to get one of the plots so they can rear their 7-month-old twins in the town where they grew up.

But high demand means only those with seniority will get a plot. Several residents have complained that the government should offer more.

Becker, the state legislator, sees the tenant-landlord unease as inevitable, given the unique circumstances.

“You’re never going to make everyone happy in any sort of government action,” he said. “You’re dealing with the community jumping off into a new world.”