Taylorsville heritage center reclaims stolen historic anvils

TAYLORSVILLE — It’s not quite home, but for Keith Sorensen, it sure feels like it.

“Absolutely,” he said with a laugh. “I actually had a great-grandfather who was a blacksmith.”

Sorensen is a volunteer with the Taylorsville-Bennion Heritage Center, a place dedicated to preserving the city’s history.

The blacksmith shop on site just might be Sorensen’s favorite, especially when school kids visit.

“One of the things they really like to hear is when the anvil gets hit,” he said while hitting the anvil with a hammer. “They get the biggest smiles on their faces.”

That’s why it really hit him when someone stole that anvil, and another one like it, almost two years ago from the blacksmith shop.

“That was very difficult to think that because we have something so special here,” he said.

Those anvils helped build Taylorsville back in the day, but you couldn’t blame volunteers for thinking they were gone for good since disappearing a couple years ago.

“I didn’t think I was going to react the way I did when they were stolen,” said Susan Yadeskie, chairperson for Taylorsville’s historic preservation committee. “I was really sad because it is a piece of our history. It is from the first blacksmith shop in the community.”

The main anvil that was stolen weighs 165 pounds, and even if a new one was bought for the museum as a replica, it is still not the same as having the original.

“It’s a piece of history. Of our history. And we really hoped to get it back,” said Yadeski.

Sorensen’s daughter works for the Salt Lake County Parks and Recreation Department and told her father that Murray police were investigating a case of an anvil stolen from Wheeler Park, then Murray police found several stolen anvils in the garage of a Murray home.

Sorensen went through the pictures of the anvils online and compared them to his pictures. He thought they matched, so, at the request of Murray police, went to the house to see and confirm the match.

The case then led to a house in Salem, where a Salem resident had bought the heavier anvil stolen from Taylorsville but didn’t know it had been stolen. Sorensen went with Taylorsville police to Salem to get it back.

“Who would’ve thought? Later that night, both anvils stolen from us were in my garage,” he said with a laugh.

Sorensen then brought the anvils back to the museum in Taylorsville.

“We are delighted to have it back,” he said.

Not only does it mean visitors will see the big anvil again, but it also means history is back where it belongs.

“We believe it was intended to live here with the rest of its friends,” he said while pointing at the other tools in the blacksmith shop.