Volunteer historian honored for service

SPRING CITY—On Oct. 9, Spring City Mayor Chris Anderson presented Kaye Watson with a Certificate of Achievement recognizing 45 years of service as Spring City’s volunteer town historian.
Spring City is one of only two places in the entire United States where the whole town is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The designation recognizes what architectural historians have called “the best example of Mormon village development” in the West.
Forbes magazine named it one of America’s prettiest towns in 2010. But the reason Spring City looks the way it does has less to do with intentional planning and more to do with fortunate neglect.
When U.S. 89 bypassed Spring City in 1959, the town’s population began a two-decade decline. Without economic pressure to modernize, the oolite limestone homes and pioneer outbuildings remained untouched. By the 1970s, historians described Spring City as a “living ghost town,” frozen in the 19th century.
Pennsylvania native Watson visited Sanpete County in 1972. She became a Sanpete resident in 1980, the same year the historic designation was granted. The Spring City history book project was just getting started when Watson joined the effort. Watson has been quoted as saying, “It’s just a small town; how much history can there be?!”
Watson was asked by the history book committee to serve as editor for what became “Life Under the Horseshoe.” The committee included Christie Bunnell, Cynthia Allred, Nedra Allred, Uarda Blackham, Craig Paulsen, and Dan Vincent, with the book published in conjunction with the Canal and Horseshoe Daughters of Utah Pioneers camps and Spring City’s municipal leadership.
What began as volunteer committee work became a five-year odyssey of researching documents, collecting photographs, interviewing residents, going to committee meetings, and working with a typesetter. Her typewriter broke partway through; she bought another and kept going.
The result was “Life Under the Horseshoe: A History of Spring City,” published in 1987. The 280-page book chronicles the town from its founding by James Allred in 1852 through its evolution into an artist community.
But Watson didn’t stop when the book was finished. She kept interviewing residents. She kept collecting photographs. She discovered connections between people that spanned generations and researched families who lived in certain historic houses.
She trained docents at the Daughters of Utah Pioneers museum. She served as Heritage Day docent “many times.” She researched Methodist school teachers and the bell that still rings from the now-restored 1899 school building.
She helped Mormon Battalion members find Spring City graves. For Deseret Book, she created a biography of Mary Ann Price Hyde (wife of Orson Hyde, the apostle who directed Sanpete Valley’s colonization and who is buried in Spring City’s cemetery).
She generated a looseleaf about Spring City’s Main Street in 1900. Watson and Lana Gardner compiled information about the Victory Theater. She created a looseleaf about Spring City mayors and another about school teachers for the 1899 school dedication. She provided information to the Sons of Utah Pioneers, to the State Historical Society, and to new owners of historic homes.
She added dates and memories about Spring City families to FamilySearch.org. She cleaned the old Fire House. As part of the Cemetery Committee, she painted wooden benches and picked up pine cones. She coordinated with historians at the State Archives. She traveled to Salt Lake to conduct research at the LDS church history building. She proofread Heritage Day materials to ensure accuracy.
Even after decades of this work, she keeps finding surprises. A few years ago, workers were digging near the front of Watson’s property along Main Street to install a gas line. But they hit something unexpected: an oolite rock wall. No one knows what it is.
No historical record explains this wall’s presence. It sits there still, beneath the surface of one of America’s most documented pioneer towns, a reminder that even 45 years of dedicated research cannot uncover every secret. Watson seems delighted by this. The mystery is part of the joy and, according to Watson, is what keeps us humble.
In September 2025, Watson submitted a letter to the Spring City Council documenting her contributions over nearly half a century. She did this not to be honored but as a matter of record. “I don’t do it for recognition,” she said. “I just enjoy it.”
“Most of the time,” Watson wrote in her letter, “I felt like I was not only ‘historian’ but also a public relations person.” She has spent hundreds, if not thousands, of hours on this work. Plus, she noted, “quite a bit of money when it’s all added up.” The compensation: zero dollars over 45 years.
Watson’s recognition comes at a moment when her beloved town, one of America’s most intact pioneer villages, faces its most significant challenge in decades. In fall of 2025, the City Council approved a controversial ordinance affecting new development.
While Watson has not sought a public role in this debate, she believes that everything she has worked to preserve—the records, the photographs, the oral histories, the architectural details, the sense of who Spring City has been—represents exactly what residents are fighting to protect.
Kaye is, in many ways, the keeper of Spring City’s memory.