The Gallery

The Main Characters (whose photos could be found — some are as yet undiscovered) are pictured on this page, mostly in order of appearance in the book. More photos will be added as they are located. If you have any pictures that are germane to this story, please contact the author at lisa (at) lisabonnice (dot) com.

Very few of these people are pictured at the ages they were in the book Castle Gate. If you’ve ever tried to find ancestral photos when your family didn’t have any in their archives, you know that it can be a miraculous find when one shows up. Our precious Helen was missing in action until just a couple weeks before this website was built. Even so, it’s a photo of a very young girl. I would love to know what she looked like as an adult.

If you’re wondering how everyone is related, here is a page with visual family trees, to help make sense of all the names.

  1. Photos of the main characters
  2. Historical images from Scotland
  3. Historical images from Castle Gate, Utah
  4. Modern-day Castle Gate

Photos of the main characters

Buchan Littlejohn
Helen Cochrane Littlejohn Garroch
Jeanie Cochrane Garroch
William Garroch Sr. “Will”
William Garroch Jr. “Willie”
Helen Littlejohn Garroch “Nellie”
Isabella Garroch “Ella”
Peter Garroch
Thomas Trow “Tam”
William Littlejohn “Bill”
Elsie Littlejohn
Bethia and John Littlejohn
George Cochrane Littlejohn “Geordie”
Isabella Garroch – Tam’s mother, Will and Pete’s sister
Dr. Claude McDermid

Historical images from Scotland

Miners in Coalburn, 1921
Photo courtesy of the Jim Hamilton Heritage Society of Coalburn
Railway Terrace, Coalburn, where Will and Helen lived.
Photo source
Brewland Street, Galston
(Helen was born in Galston).
Dreghorn, where Will and Helen met, married and had their first three children. Photo courtesy of the kind bartender at the Dreghorn Inn.

Historical images from Castle Gate, Utah

These photos are of the town of Castle Gate around the time the Garrochs and Littlejohns lived there, and include some photos of the rescue efforts and mining documents.

The Castle Gate at the mouth of Price Canyon
The town of Castle Gate. One of the Castle Gate rocks can be seen in the far distance.
The tipple
The company store downstairs and office, upstairs, on the right in this photo.
Castle Gate Post Office
Main Street, Helper Utah
Main Street, Helper Utah
Miners outside of Mine #2 days before the explosion.
The gaping maw that was once the entrance to Mine #2 (see previous photo).
Rescue crews work around the clock for days.
Source: https://archives.lib.byu.edu/repositories/14/resources/10188.
Utah State Historical Society https://collections.lib.utah.edu/ark:/87278/s67h1vgv
This is the map of Castle Gate Mine #2, with the names and locations of the bodies, along with the occupation of each miner when he was killed.
A high resolution version of this map can be seen on the Family Search site, but you need to create and/or be logged in to your account to access it.

Modern-day Castle Gate

These photos, taken by author Lisa Bonnice, show what the area of Castle Gate looks like today. The town has been dismantled and the land reclaimed to look as if nothing was ever there. The western half of the Castle Gate rock formation has been torn down in order to widen the road. The only things left are a few monuments along the highway, the cemetery and the entrance to Mine # 1 (high up on a hill and you can only see it if you squint) and Mine #2 in Willow Creek Canyon. There is also a wonderful museum in Helper, just down the highway a few miles where several of these photos were taken.

Castle Gate cemetery
Entrance to Mine #2 as it appears today.
The tall white headstone in the center is Will and Helen’s. The second to the left is Pete and Tam’s shared headstone.
It was a board like this where the miners’ ID chips were blown off, making the identification process more difficult.
This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is dscn0317.jpg

Leave a comment