EXPLORE LAGOON: PIONEER VILLAGE TOUR: Gingerbread House

 

GINGERBREAD HOUSE

The Gingerbread House was painted white a few years ago. A porch swing was also recently removed. A popular ghost story about the house says that if you are in the house around six o'clock you'll be invited to dinner. The wedding dress displayed in the bedroom has also been the source of ghost stories involving a bride being locked in the attic or something to that effect. The sign in front of the house can be confusing. The house was built by Alma Gibbons, but most of the information on the sign is about his parents.

 

"The Pioneer Village 'Gingerbread House' was built by Alma Gibbons for his bride, Cora Melissa Judd, in 1904. He cut the trees from his property, hauled them to his saw mill, and built the home and gingerbread trim with his own hands.

      Gingerbread is folk art. Individuals such as Alma Gibbons executed their own fanciful designs. This charming house had no electricity or plumbing. The authentic pioneer furniture was not originally in this home, but was acquired from other homes of the same period. Alma's father pushed a handcart across the plains arriving in Utah in 1859. He married Sarah Elizabeth Lack who was fourteen years old. He was thirty-eight. Her mother had died while coming to Utah in a covered wagon leaving Sarah and her sister orphans.

      Brigham Young sent them to the area now known as Rockport, Utah to settle the community. They had seventeen children, ten boys, and seven girls. Because there were continual feuds over 'water-rights' as well as threats from Indian raids, Sarah never met a visitor without her gun. She was as protective of her husband as she was of her children and her home."

 

 

 

 

NEXT STOP: Erastus Bingham Cabin

 

 

SOURCES

Lagoon

 

Updated 31 Jul 2007