Big John Statue

Big John stands on the east side of South Main Street in Helper, just south of Janet Street. He is a coal miner 18 feet tall, made of fiberglass, with a miner’s helmet on his head and a pick in his hands. He is painted black all over. A Roadside America contributor who signs as Sumoflam had seen dozens of figures of his kind and wrote, “The coal black shininess was pretty awesome.” Main Street runs due north from him and appears to end against the Book Cliffs, an escarpment of shale and sandstone shading from gray to red.

The miner in front of the auditorium

His stand was built from rails, spikes, and plates gathered from the Castle Gate Mine Tram Way, according to the historical marker. A plaque at his base gives his history. Directly behind him is the Helper Civic Auditorium, one of two WPA buildings on Main Street. The Salt Lake City architects Scott and Welch designed it in the international style, and its front is built on long curves. The front portion holds the City Council Chambers, and the Helper City Library occupies the right side. Carbon County lists no services at the site.

In 2016 Main Street was torn up for a few months and became a dirt road again. In October of that year a visitor, Meg Zorn, reported that construction workers stopped work to help her across to him. They called him “The big guy.”

The order of February 1964

In February 1964, Helper citizens, the mayor, and the city council decided the city needed a civic attraction. The county’s account names the mayor, Chris Jouflas, and says the attraction was meant to honor the town’s mining history. A museum was started that same winter. Its first organizing meeting was held on February 27, 1964, with Councilman Al Veltri as chairman, and by March 12 the Western Mining Museum was underway.

The city learned of International Fiberglass in Venice, California. The company had first built fiberglass boats and in 1963 began making tall advertising figures. The county says it made thousands of similar statues for various industries. Helper placed an order for a coal miner, and the company made him from a Paul Bunyan mold it already had, putting a pick where Bunyan’s axe had been and a miner’s helmet on his head. Roadside America files him among its “Muffler Men” and says he was custom-made and painted coal black for the town. Most sources give 1964 as the year he went up; the county’s attraction page says only that he has stood in Helper since the 1960s.

The community chose his name from Jimmy Dean’s song “Big Bad John.” Utah Stories calls it the best country song of the year in 1961. The marker says the name followed the earlier fame of “16 Tons.”

Who he stands for

The marker calls Big John a memorial to those who had given their lives in local mines since the late 1890s. The county calls him an unofficial one. Helper takes its name from the “helper” steam engines that pushed freight trains up the canyon and over Soldier Summit. The town grew with the railyard and the mines, which recruited workers in Europe and Asia during the 1890s. James Boyd, a former director of the Western Mining and Railroad Museum, told a Visit Utah writer that the major mining disasters took whole families, generations of men working side by side. In all, he said, 1,351 died. The museum, a short walk from the statue, has a room given to the Castlegate Mine explosion.

The county’s tourism page links Big John to a story people in Helper still tell, the White Lady of Spring Canyon. It exists in many versions. In the most common one, she lost her husband in a mining accident at Peerless and slowly lost her mind. She is said to visit Spring Canyon still, at Halloween.