Inside the new state liquor store? Fascinating artifacts from SLC's past

SALT LAKE CITY — Next to the cold beer and the bottles of spirits at Utah's newest liquor store will be something truly unique.

A museum-quality exhibit of historic artifacts that were unearthed as the state's first-ever multi-story liquor store was built. The display is at the store on 300 South and Edison St. in downtown Salt Lake City that opens to the public on Monday.

"Most of the material you’re looking at is 1870s to 1900," said Chris Merritt, the Utah State Historic Preservation Officer, who showed the artifacts to FOX 13 News ahead of the store's opening.

There are old bones, medicine bottles (in those days it was mostly alcohol with some medicine mixed in), pottery and dishes, lots of liquor bottles (appropriate given where we are) and even a bottle of formaldehyde.

"It's the first time in my career that I found a concentrated embalming fluid bottle. I really scratched my head there, why is this showing up?" Merritt said. "There was never an undertaker here. Deeper, deeper research? It was a really common practice in restaurants and in boarding houses that as milk started to turn, you’d put a little formaldehyde in the milk to keep it from spoiling."

All of these artifacts were found underneath the parking lot where the liquor store now sits. Construction crews doing excavation work found a cache of them. They called Merritt to help out.

"When state agencies are doing any kind of work, they have an obligation for cultural resources," he explained.

The artifacts tell a story of Salt Lake City in the years when the railroad first arrived and how people lived. Edison Street itself was a wild place of bars and brothels.

"This was one very saloon rich area, let’s put it at that, for folks wanting to partake of a different lifestyle than the suburban areas that were growing at the time," Merritt said.

There are bottles of capers that were used to season foods (very popular at the time). The area became single-family homes, then shops and parking lots and now it's filling in again with increasing urbanization.

"The artifacts that we found are fairly robust. I think a lot of this is apartment or tenement housing. Most of the items came from a privy or outhouse. As that became full, you dump your trash and dig a hole next to it," Merritt said.

This is the first liquor store to have a historic exhibit inside it.

"I think that’s a really cool way to connect the patrons experience as they come into this location to what’s been here for at least 150 years right underneath our feet," he added.

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