Alunite that Grandpa Pitts was involved in mining, as a team driver.

Alunite (pronounced /ˈælənaɪt/) is a ghost town located some 5 miles (8.0 km) south of Marysvale, near the mouth of Cottonwood Canyon in Piute County, Utah, United States. A small but important mining town during World War I, Alunite was inhabited about 1915–1930.

History

In 1912 a prospector named Thomas Gillan discovered a wide vein of spar in Cottonwood Canyon. The sample he sent for analysis was identified as alunite, an ore rich in both aluminum and potash. Gillan made a deal with the Mineral Products Corporation to develop the deposit, mine the alunite, and extract potash for fertilizer. By 1915 the company had constructed a reduction plant in the mouth of the canyon to produce potash from the ore. The small company town that grew up around the plant was named Alunite.  Because the town was so close to Marysvale, it never had its own church or business district, but it did have a school, company store, and post office.

When the United States entered World War I, the Alunite mines gained strategic importance as the only domestic source of potash, needed for manufacturing explosives, that was already under development. The government also saw potential in alunite's aluminum content, and installed a 24-hour work force experimenting with processes to extract alumina from alunite. This increase in employees raised the town's population over 100. The war also brought rumors of foreign spiesand saboteurs. Suspicious fires were blamed on enemy agents, and there were reports of people caught trying to bomb the potash plants or gather sensitive information.

Most of the alunite mining activity ended after the war. The alumina extraction experiments had been successful, but the processes developed were prohibitively expensive. Demand for potash continued to drop, until by 1930 it was also too costly to produce. The mines closed, the mill was torn down, and Alunite became a ghost town. A second small attempt was made to extract aluminum during World War II, but none of the town was ever rebuilt.^[3] Alunite lies in ruins today; numerous foundations and walls are still visible.

Alunite is a mineral of many uses.  Its chemical composition allows for the recovery of its individual components, which can be utilized as a source of alum, potassium, and aluminum, as well as mineral specimens.  The recovered chemical components, most notably alumina, obtained through a wet chemical caustic leach, is used in the commercial manufacturing process of aluminum.   The sourced alumina is employed as the base for the production of aluminium metal via the electrolytic reduction of alumina in a molten bath of natural or synthetic cryolite (Na3AlF6), known as the Hall-Heroult process. Alunite Compound Particle Uses:

• Aluminum
• Fertilizer
• Additive in leather and textile industries
• Resins
• Fibers
• Rubbers
• Alloys
• Medical astringent
• Baking powder
• Mordant dye

* It requires approximately 6 times as much alunite to produce one unit of alumina, which also generates sulfuric acid and potassium sulfate.

Donnette About BYU

I haven't heard from BYU either. They were collecting stories of LDS men 
in all the wars - not just the few that they started with. I sent them a 
CD with war stories of Ray and Claude, and of Richard and his brother, 
Herbert Jr. who were in WWII. It is nice they are being archived. 

A number of years ago Richard and I were gathering information to write 
some of our ancestors' histories and found that someone had written the 
biography as a Master's thesis for one of Richard's ancestors - George 
Washington Hill. As Richard was a descendant they Xeroxed Richard a 
copy. A couple of years ago I went to BYU and asked if they could copy 
off some copies for our children. They showed me that they have been 
computerizing all those histories and that they are online for anyone to 
print off. It is great that some of these things are so available. 

 I am in good health. I work once a week at the Lindon Family History 
Center and am a Ward Family History Consultant. And I do the ward 
bulletin each week. My daughter, Barbara, who lives in Orem comes once a 
week for lunch to see if I'm still getting around and helps me with my 
little garden. And my daughter, Cynthia, has moved to Lehi - so I see 
them both fairly often. Some of the grandchildren drop by. I am so glad 
we moved to Lindon. None of the family are left in Idaho. 

It is always great to hear from the family - the children and the 
cousins and the friends. Always fun to see your family pictures on the 
Christmas cards.

Love to all, Donnette

Easter weekend, on Saturday, we suffered a forced entry burglary. This was our second burglary that involved a forced entry of our home. We have, as most have had, a car burglary. That also involved a forced entry when the burglar broke a side window into our car. Our recent home burglary saw less door damage but more monetary loss than the first burglary at this home. The first was more traumatic, however, since one of our daughters entered the home while the burglars were still about their business. Fortunately, for us and for her, the burglars made a hasty exit and she was terrified but unharmed. 

As I was thinking about all of this, I remembered the time when, as young BYU students, my husband and I were awakened late during the night by the sound of a car entering our apartment complex. It was summer and we had our windows open. Oddly, we knew this was not the vehicle of a neighbor so we went to our window to look out. We lived on the top floor of one building which faced the other building in the complex. The car backed out of the driveway and we assumed that our neighbor on the floor below and facing us was being dropped off after their stint nursing at a nearby facility. About to turn from the window, we noted a man dressed in dark clothing lift the screen from the window of the apartment of our friend. We saw him climb in through the window and drop from sight. My husband hurried to the phone to call police officers who soon arrived with a police dog. However, the man went out the back door as the police went in the front door. It was only then that our sleeping neighbor, a female, realized she had had an intruder. The apartment complex was long and a waiting car at the back spirited off the intruder before the police dog could make him stop.

The next day, we were called upon to go to police headquarters and see if we could identify any known burglar on the mug sheets kept on record there. It was fruitless, of course. It was, after all, night time and all we had was a good idea of size and shape. It was much the same with our latest burglary. It is difficult to identify someone who intrudes. Eventually, we all hope, the dishonest among us are finally found. In our burglary case, the fingerprints found were of a person with large-sized fingers who was wearing gloves. We also had our fingerprints taken in order to see if one bare-fingered print was of the burglar. It turned out to be a match for my thumb.

We now have an electronic alarm system with many bells and whistles which our eight children and their spouses purchased and had installed.

My purpose in writing about this is that, had you asked me when I was 16 if I would ever have an alarm system, I would have responded with a resounding: "NO!" My grandmother and I used to open the doors and windows in the evenings during the summer. We left those windows and doors open and went to bed and never worried about having anyone break in or do us harm. One time, while we were away from home (I think we were buying groceries.), a couple of neighbor boys came in and helped themselves to treats but that was about the worst of it. There was one time when, in the early morning hours, we heard some banging about in the living room. Grandma went into the living room and found one of our neighbors. He was drunk and thought he was sneaking into his own home. When the lights went on in the living room, he was more surprised than we were. After that, Grandma always remembered to latch the screen door. It had one of those simple little hooks that dropped through an eye. I suppose that a credit card would have lifted the latch but we didn't have credit cards.

I wonder if we really were safer in the 1950s or if we were just more naive?

Burglary

Easter weekend, on Saturday, we suffered a forced entry burglary. This was our second burglary that involved a forced entry of our home. We have, as most have had, a car burglary. That also involved a forced entry when the burglar broke a side window into our car. Our recent home burglary saw less door damage but more monetary loss than the first burglary at this home. The first was more traumatic, however, since one of our daughters entered the home while the burglars were still about their business. Fortunately, for us and for her, the burglars made a hasty exit and she was terrified but unharmed. 

As I was thinking about all of this, I remembered the time when, as young BYU students, my husband and I were awakened late during the night by the sound of a car entering our apartment complex. It was summer and we had our windows open. Oddly, we knew this was not the vehicle of a neighbor so we went to our window to look out. We lived on the top floor of one building which faced the other building in the complex. The car backed out of the driveway and we assumed that our neighbor on the floor below and facing us was being dropped off after their stint nursing at a nearby facility. About to turn from the window, we noted a man dressed in dark clothing lift the screen from the window of the apartment of our friend. We saw him climb in through the window and drop from sight. My husband hurried to the phone to call police officers who soon arrived with a police dog. However, the man went out the back door as the police went in the front door. It was only then that our sleeping neighbor, a female, realized she had had an intruder. The apartment complex was long and a waiting car at the back spirited off the intruder before the police dog could make him stop.

The next day, we were called upon to go to police headquarters and see if we could identify any known burglar on the mug sheets kept on record there. It was fruitless, of course. It was, after all, night time and all we had was a good idea of size and shape. It was much the same with our latest burglary. It is difficult to identify someone who intrudes. Eventually, we all hope, the dishonest among us are finally found. In our burglary case, the fingerprints found were of a person with large-sized fingers who was wearing gloves. We also had our fingerprints taken in order to see if one bare-fingered print was of the burglar. It turned out to be a match for my thumb.

We now have an electronic alarm system with many bells and whistles which our eight children and their spouses purchased and had installed.

My purpose in writing about this is that, had you asked me when I was 16 if I would ever have an alarm system, I would have responded with a resounding: "NO!" My grandmother and I used to open the doors and windows in the evenings during the summer. We left those windows and doors open and went to bed and never worried about having anyone break in or do us harm. One time, while we were away from home (I think we were buying groceries.), a couple of neighbor boys came in and helped themselves to treats but that was about the worst of it. There was one time when, in the early morning hours, we heard some banging about in the living room. Grandma went into the living room and found one of our neighbors. He was drunk and thought he was sneaking into his own home. When the lights went on in the living room, he was more surprised than we were. After that, Grandma always remembered to latch the screen door. It had one of those simple little hooks that dropped through an eye. I suppose that a credit card would have lifted the latch but we didn't have credit cards.

I wonder if we really were safer in the 1950s or if we were just more naive?