Portrait of an artist's haven

SANPETE COUNTY — If U.S. 89 is off the beaten track, Spring City, located about a mile east of the highway, almost qualifies as boondocks.

Who would expect, in a place like this, to find a dozen serious artists working out of everything from a Main Street storefront to a 19th century Relief Society building? Not amateurs, mind you, but artists who sell tens of thousands of dollars worth of work annually through galleries from Salt Lake City to Paris.

Throw in an art dealer, a restoration contractor, a couple of architects, a furniture craftsman and a professor emeritus of political science, to name a few, and you have an intellectually vibrant art community.

Over the past 30 years, that's what Spring City, situated just south of Mt. Pleasant, has become.

Some artists say the solidity of the Wasatch Plateau to the east, the tranquility of the cultivated Sanpete Valley and the nostalgic feel of Spring City's historic buildings provide subject matter and ambience for the artistic life.

"It's a beautiful place," says Douglas Freyer, a mural painter and illustrator who arrived seven months ago. "It has a great variety of people. Because it's a National Historic District, people are into preserving the past. I feel comfortable here."

Other artists chose the location because of the lifestyle it offers. In Spring City, you can have horses, grow vegetables, watch deer and elk grazing along roadsides, or ponder a moonscape during a pre-dawn jog.

"In our case, it's been more a focus on our lives, our family, our friends, our animals. Our work flows out of the content of our lives," says potter Joe Bennion. He and his wife, Lee, a painter, have lived in Spring City for 27 years.

The town was founded in 1852, when Brigham Young asked James Allred, a settler in Manti about 25 miles to the south, to explore a stream that runs through the area. The Allred family ended up settling beside a natural spring. That's how the town got its name.

In 1910, the population peaked at 1,250. But there wasn't sufficient water to support all the families who wanted to farm around Spring City. The population dwindled. By 1950, Spring City was a semi-ghost town with fewer than 500 residents. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints discussed demolishing the historic ward chapel built with stone quarried nearby.

But things turned around. A few families came from surrounding towns. "Move-ins," the Sanpete County term for anyone who isn't descended from a pioneer settler, arrived from the Wasatch Front and out-of-state. By 2000, the town had a population of about 1,000.