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Scorup
House
In 1903
John Albert Scorup
commissioned stone masons Nick Loveless and Ed Thompson to
construct a house using stone quarried from the bluffs for
which the town of Bluff was named.
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The date makes the house something of an anomaly, since the
focus of the pioneers had shifted to Blanding and Monticello
by that time. (Construction of a county courthouse was abandoned
in 1893 and the county seat moved to Monticello.)
On January
2, 1895, Scorup married Emma Bayles of Bluff. After spending
the winter with his parents in Salina, Scorup and his bride
established their home in a small rented log house in Bluff.
Scorup was an early rancher in San Juan County and made his
fortune with the Scorup Cattle Company.
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The Scorup house has endured despite time and neglect. Elegant
verandas and porches encircling the house were removed, paint
on wood trim faded, and walls settled causing, mason joints
to crack. |
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But
there is hope; the current owners poured a new concrete base
to stabilize the walls and hired a stone mason to replace
lime mortar between sandstone blocks and rebuild the fireplaces
that once heated the house.
As remortarization
went on they found things that the Scorups had lost. Packrats
had stashed cashes of pinion nuts, and dried roses in the
ceilings and walls of the house. They also found children's
art work, Veda Scorup's Brigham Young Academy report card,
broken china, six pairs of underwear, a child's shoe, a set
of oak table leaves, and liquor.
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Under the eves worker's found copies of the Desert Semi-Weekly
News dated 1903 and 1912 still having Scorup's mailing label,
cotton collars for men's shirts, stamps, post cards addressed
to Mrs. Emma Scorup, mail-order catalogs, and a 1909 issue of
the Women's Home Companion, in another packrat nest. |
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Dried
roses, a child's shoe, children's art work, school report
and bottles found in walls and under floorboards. From photographs,
verandas and porches were rebuilt, and Emma Scorup's fruit
orchards and rose garden were re-established.
Scorup
and his family lived in the house from 1904 to 1917, then
moved north for a better education for his children.
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To take a virtual
tour of Bluff's Historic District, click on any of the houses in
the map below, or their corresponding names under the map.
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