The Joseph Murdock Home ~ Est 1902

Senator Joseph R. Murdock built this 8500 SqFt, 13 bedroom home in 1902 for his wife Margaret and their eleven children.  For many, many years it was the largest home in the region.  Joseph was born in Salt Lake City in 1858. His parents, Nymphas and Sarah Murdock were early converts to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. They came across the plains from Nauvoo, Illinois in 1846 with the second battalion organized by Brigham Young which included over 500 hand-carts and wagons.

At age 13, Joseph’s parents decided to move from Salt Lake City to the Heber Valley (known at that time as “The Valley of the Cones” – in reference to the small geo-thermal cones (domes) which were produced by the minerals from all the geo thermal activity in the valley. 

Joseph’s family settled in the town now known as Charleston, where they would establish a dairy farm. In 1875,  at age 17, Joseph attended the inaugural year of what is now known as Brigham Young University – at that time, it was called Brigham Young Academy. 

Upon graduating Brigham Young Academy, Joseph returned to the Heber Valley where he continued to work on the family farm while at the same time, he taught elementary school in Charleston.

In 1878 Joseph married Margaret Wright. They were blessed with eleven children – seven daughters and four boys. One daughter passed away as an infant, the other ten children lived into adulthood.

Joseph’s father, Nymphas, decided to open a mercantile store. So, Joseph helped his father get the Heber Valley Mercantile off the ground.  A few years later Joseph’s father turned the mercantile operation over to Joseph.   In 1904, Joseph built the Heber Valley Bank and became president of it.   Both the Heber Valley Bank and the Heber Mercantile are still on Heber's Main Street today.

One of Joseph’s most notable contributions to the region was when he raised over two million dollars to construct a canal which would divert the water from the Heber Valley down to the Utah and Salt Lake Counties area.  This insured the water supply for those areas and spurred the development of those regions as it became the primary water source for tens of thousands of homes and hundreds of thousands of acres.

Joseph was very involved in his church and his community.  He was in the bishopric in Charleston and he was later called as a Stake President in Heber.  He was also a mayor of Heber City for nearly ten years and later, in November 1900, he was elected Senator from the Fifth Senatorial District.

Joseph spent most of his life in the Heber Valley until he passed away in 1931 at the age of 73.