Maurine Jones Anderson has been chosen to serve as grand marshal for this year’s July 24 Pioneer Days Celebration in Vernal. She turned 99 in March.

The annual celebration will start off Saturday with the traditional Boy Scout Breakfast to be held at the Colton Pavilion from 6-9:30 a.m. The parade will begin at 10 a.m. and will follow a parade route down Vernal’s Main Street and will feature floats centered on Utah’s unique statehood and settlement history.

Scouts in the area will be celebrating 100 years of scouting and all are encouraged to walk the parade in full uniform that morning.

At 2 p.m. the scouts will be organizing a Scout-A-Rama at Western Park in Vernal. There will be a closing ceremony scheduled for the outdoor amphitheater at Western Park at 4:30 p.m.

The Scout-a-Rama will feature many activities, including a climbing wall, atlati throwing, cooking demonstrations, CERT, miniature golf, ham radio and many others.

Scouts and their families are encouraged to attend an event that only comes around every 100 years.

ANDERSON

BIOGRAPHY

Maurine Anderson has lived in quite a number of Utah, Idaho and Nevada locations, but is best known for her marriage to LaRell Anderson before moving to Vernal and owning and operating Uinta Packing.

She was born March 22 in Logan. She graduated from Granite High School in Salt Lake in 1929 and later from the University of Utah, where she graduated in elementary education in 1933.

Maurine and LaRell met while dancing in one of the many dance halls along the Wasatch Front. According to their son, Kent Anderson, they both loved to dance.

“Dad asked her to dance and they exchanged some stories and were fast friends,” Kent said. “But, in the end, she liked to dance and dad was not only a fast dancer, he was fun.”

Maurine and LaRell were married in Twin Falls, Idaho, where LaRell was working at Idaho Packing Co. They are the parents of five sons that include Gary, Court, Brent, Don and Kent.

After working in Twin Falls, the couple moved to Salt Lake where he was employed at Vetters Meat Co. There, he learned the art of making sausage.

“LaRell’s uncle, George Martinsen, living in Vernal, wrote and said it looks like the area could support a meat plant,” commented Anderson.

After visiting the Vernal area, LaRell decided to move his family to the Basin and bought 50 percent ownership in a small plant on Main Street where Jim’s Café used to be.

A year later a smokehouse fire leveled the plant. With insurance money, a small inheritance from the death of his father, he built a new plant at 400 North Vernal Ave. and managed a successful operation with the help of Maurine and many wonderful employees.

Eventually, LaRell’s health began to deteriorate, so he sold the plant to their son, Don and Elja Anderson, and built a new home about four miles northwest of Vernal near the foothills.

LaRell, her sweetheart from Koosharem, Utah, of 44 years, died April 4, 1978 when he was 72 years old.

Maurine explained that all the boys have helped in the family meat-packing business and when she was busy working in the office, they would come home and help out there.

Maurine said that two of their sons have filled missions for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and all four have been married in the Temple.

She also noted that three have attended college: one attended for three years, one graduated and one is now working toward a master’s degree.

Going hand in hand with the meat-packing business, Maurine and LaRell were also busy running a catering business.

“Father loved to cook and barbecue and he started cooking for reunions, church dinners and even a Lions’ convention,” said son Court. “It went on and on every year with gig feasts. They were side by side preparing and serving the banquets for many years.”

Not only was the couple and family busy with the meat-packing plant, they got involved with what would eventually become the Grizzley Ridge ski area.

Kent and Cort explained that at the time they were part of a family that included five sons and they would take their willey’s jeep to the top of Highway 191 north of Vernal to the Little Brush Creek area in the winter time.

The willeys’ jeep had a power take off on the back that made a great power source to run some webbing up to a pulley in a tree to make a rope tow for the boys to ski.

Skiing was something Maurine and LaRell started when they were first married in Idaho and a hobby that Maurine kept up for most of her life, skiing the last time in her 50s.

After visitors saw the homemade rope pull using the jeep, someone commented that there was a better area for skiing in the Grizzley Ridge area. The Andersons checked this area out and with Forest Service approval, opened a ski area with two rope tows and a platter pull lift — a bar with a platter that you sit on — that would pull you up the hill some 1000 feet.

The Grizzley Ridge operation stayed in operation for seven or eight years before it was shut down because the family couldn’t make ends meet with winter participation only.

“She drew the plans, lodge, parking lot, runs on the mountain, everything,” said Court. “She was the architect. All of the original rough draft drawings were hers.”

Court concluded that his mother was quite shy and didn’t get out in the public much, but she had her talents and worked hard to make the business successful.

“She worked close with dad in a lot of things,” said Kent. “She is a survivor.”