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Located in the ocher mountains in a little canyon called sunshine canyon just outside of Cedar Fort and before Ophir was an old mining town that took on the canyons name and was called Sunshine. Nothing remains today of the old town site except the huge mine tailings and the diggings. The area however is very haunted by its old residents who were killed there still walk the area. Sunshine was a short lived town but was one of the meanest and rankest in Utah. It was established around 1890 I believe. My grandfather told us stories of the old town and to this day it is still one of our favorite places to go camping, shooting and riding dirt bikes. On several occasions myself and several family members have seen the ghost of a man walking around the area of the old mine. My grandfather told us as kids growing up when we would camp there during deer season about an old shop keepers ghost who haunts the area. The story he told went like this. After gold was discovered here a tent town soon started to spring up around the mine. As the mine grew and the ore hit was plentiful wood buildings were soon replacing the tents. Saloons and houses of ill-repute were built in abundance. Murders and shootings in the town were common. Bodies of both men and women were found most every morning after a payday around the red light district. There was apparently a shop keeper who ran a small general store at the town by the name of Hamelin. This man was a very pleasant person and liked by everyone in town. However unknown to the towns people this kind man had a very dark side. It seems that on paydays he would wait outside of the saloons and follow the ladies of the evening and her gentleman caller to her shanty and after they were good and liquored up he would hit who ever on the head as they would leave, cut their throat and take what ever cash and goods they had on them. One day a lady who's husband had been murdered was waiting for the stage coach to take her to Salt Lake where she was moving back to and she went into Hamelin's store to browse and pass the time. She noticed an old railroad watch for sale in Hamelin show case and recognized it as being her deceased husbands. There was no law or sheriff in the town so she with out saying a word to Mr. Hamelin went to the mine office where her husband had worked and informed her husbands old foreman. He gathered up several of his employees and they went to Hamelin store along with the lady. When asked about the watch Hamelin said that he bought the watch from the ladies husband a month before. However both the mans wife and a co-worker remember seeing the watch in the dead mans possession the day before he was found with his throat cut. The miners started to search Hamelin store and he pulled a gun, the foreman was also armed and beat Hamelin to the draw wounding him in the lower stomach. Upon searching the store they found goods which were identified as belonging to up to as many as 8 people who had been found murdered over the past 6 months. With justice being left to the vigilantes as is many parts of the old west the miners took the wounded store keeper down into and abandoned mine shaft that was not worked anymore and tied him to a support beam 300 feet below the earth and left him there to either starve or bleed to death, they did not care which. The elevator which lowered workers down into that old shaft was then raised and the ropes cut so that no one could ever go down there again. It is said (And we have herd it) when the wind blows out there you can still here Hamelin cry's echoing out of the pit and through the air of the sunshine canyon. His ghost still comes up from the depths of the mine to walk the town looking for throats to cut, so if you go out to this area do as we do, stay in pairs and talk to no one you do not know and keep a good distance from other travelers in the area that you may come across because it just may be Hamelin. It is said that his skeletal remains are still tied to the old beam down in that mine. |
