Mixed in with the vehicles are some buildings of yesteryear, including a shoeshine shop that once stood on North Temple, a salvage yard and filling station, a printing shop and a soda shop that was once a polygamist home on 300 West and 1800 South in Salt Lake City. He also has a couple of restored log cabins — tiny, one-room affairs with bare essentials as furnishings. "Can you just imagine living like that?" he asks. "But it would be better than a tent." The cabins are especially popular with schoolkids, he says.

Mixed in and around the complex are samples of just about anything else you can imagine: tools, gas pumps, jail doors, waffle irons, salesman's samples of sliding doors and wood-burning stoves. There are signs from Texaco, Mobil, Phillips 66 and Orange Crush. There's a look at the way electrical wiring was done in the 1920s — a system called knob-and-tube wiring.

They are all things that have been gathered up from here, there and everywhere. That has been one of the most enjoyable parts of his collecting, says Erickson. He's traveled all over the country, even to other parts of the world, and he's met such interesting people. "I have good friends all over the world."

Erickson bought land in Wallsburg to house his growing collections 35 years ago. "We just wanted to get out of the city," he said, and he fell in love with the rural area tucked into a valley off U.S. 189 just south of Heber. Erickson owned a construction company in Salt Lake City. "At first, we just spent weekends here," but since he retired, it has become his home. His wife died last winter. "She was a big part of this," he says, but with the help of his Welsh Corgi, Bingo, he's carrying on.

He's currently working on building a home for a sawmill. And he's laying track for one of his narrow-gauge steam railroads.

Look at his machines and think about the past, he invites. Think about how things used to get done, and what it took to make things work. Think about how we have used steam and oil and gasoline, how we have built motors and engines and used them to power our lives. That's what has always intrigued him, he says. "I've always liked to think about power and what it can do."

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E-mail: carma@desnews.com