This week's flash fiction was inspired by the corner building of the High West Distillery. The Distillery (& Saloon) is actually made up of two buildings\. I'm focusing on the old stable and not the house, as I may still use that structure for another piece of fiction. Both have long an storied histories.
High West is an interesting distillery for a lot of reasons, and if you happen to be in Park City, Utah at any point, you should most definitely check them out. I suggest the peach vodka and Rendezvous Rye. But let's focus on the building: The inspiration for this week's post was actually a livery stable when it was first built, and was later converted into the National Garage (a gas station and mechanic's shop).
Park City began its life as a silver camp. That's not to say people were not in the area before the miners came, but Park City itself basically started when silver was discovered in the 1860s. This building was not built until 1907 by Ellsworth J. Beggs, and was at least the second livery in town. Beggs' & Buckley's serviced the horses used to pull ore carts under ground.
After that it was transitioned into a garage and changed hands several times. Each time a new owner bought the garage, new lettering was painted over the old. In 1981, the offices of the Silver King Mines Coalition across the street burned down, melting the paint off the facade above the garage door. When High West bought the building around 2007, they decided to maintain the historically unique look of its upper planks. High West is the first distillery to operate legally in the state of Utah since 1870.
