Site 14 – Rock House (Meridian’s Cabin)
Location: Slightly above Milepost 8 on the north side of the road
Date: 1929 to about 1949
Significance: The ruins of a rock cabin and quarry reveal another occupation supported by the canyon. This site is also a reminder of the location of the old canyon road.
Photo Title: Rock House (Meridian’s Cabin), Detail [1]
Rock House, or Meridian’s Cabin, can be a challenge to locate from a moving car. It’s tucked up against the rocks, but not too far from the road, on a steep north embankment. If you manage to catch a glimpse of the purple stone cabin, it leaves you wondering if someone lived there and why. Only the rear wall, a patchwork of purple stone, remains to tell the story of Russian immigrants who came to Utah and made a living quarrying stone in the canyon for their downtown business. Antonio Alexander Meridian and his wife, Anna, immigrated to Utah in the late 1920’s, settled on south Main St. and began a business called Monumental and Sculptor Works. The canyon provided the material, purple-tinted stone, and in July of 1929 he filed the Meridian Quarry Lode claim, just as the U.S. was beginning its descent into The Great Depression. On the south side of the canyon road, across from the cabin, a dead-end road is visible, supported by a purple-stone retaining wall. Meridian prepared his rocks here before taking them into the city. He inscribed a slightly misspelled message on the large rocks closest to the creek’s edge: PRIVAT PROPERTY, KEEP OUT.
Sometime between 1929 and 1941, the stone cabin was constructed while they continued to operate their business downtown. Anna Meridian died in 1943, leaving just her husband, Antonio, and his brother, Nicholas, who ran the Intermountain Monumental Company in Ogden. Canyon residents from the 1940’s remembered Antonio as somewhat reclusive as he spent more time at the quarry and cabin, although he retained his residence downtown and continued to run his business, now named Meridian Monument Company. He closed his business in 1949 or 1950, moved into a room at the Hotel New York on Post Office Place in Salt Lake City, and died there in 1952 at age seventy-four.
Meridian’s abandoned cabin stood until the early 1960’s when the mountainside was cut to create the existing canyon road. This cut altered the slope supporting the cabin, causing the cabin to collapse, except for the rear wall. Now, one deteriorating wall remains with slim vertical openings that held the wooden floor joists to support the second floor. The original path from the quarry to the cabin began on the north side of the creek, at the old road level, and wound around up to the cabin. Sections of a purple retaining wall that supported the curving path are visible to the right of the cabin, through the trees. Standing at the creek’s edge now, which is abutted by decades of debris beginning with the 1960’s road cut, you can try to imagine the winding path that led from the quarry up to the cabin, sheltered against the mountain wall. [2]
Photo Title: Meridian’s Cabin can be seen in the upper left corner, on the north side of the canyon road, nestled between the rocks. [3]
Photo Title: View of the dead-end quarry retaining wall on the south side of the canyon road. [4]
Interesting Fact: Antonio Meridian’s quarry message, nearly 100 years old, is still visible.
Photo Title: “Privat Property, Keep Out” carved into the rock near the quarry. [5]