Joseph and Adam Sharp deliver telegraph poles and sacks of flour to Nevada

The Sharp brothers used the wagons they owned to haul other kinds of freight as well. After the stone quarries were well under way and the Temple quarry had its great blocks of granite delivered by the Sharp brothers to the Salt Lake Temple site. They turned to delivering telegraph poles to small settlements in Nevada. At one point flour became worth its weight in gold at the Silver mines in Carson City. The brothers decided to haul a wagon load of flour out to Carson City. The road from Salt Lake City through Winnemuca and onwards was troubled by highwaymen that were laying in wait for the return trip of any of the freight haulers that came across the desert with their pockets full of cash.

Joseph and Adam had devised a plan with the help of a non-Mormon friend they had met in Saint Louis. This friend was a gambler and had been very gifted at dealing cards. He could deal you just the hand he wanted to give you to reel you in and in the end when you begin to bet heavily he would deal himself a winning hand to take everything and leave the others at the table penniless. He lived in Corinne at the time, which was a notorious city competing with Salt Lake City as the Capital of the territory and railhead for the Continental Railroad during its day the anti-Mormon political faction resided at Corinne.

So it was that Joseph and Adam rode with their friend part of the way to Carson City, No one would suspect that they were friends coming from such opposite sides of the cultural climate of Utah. Some fifty miles from Carson City they parted ways and went into town from separate directions. There the Sharp brothers sold there flour for a whopping fortune. Part of the plan for them to ride home in safety was that Adam would slap Whiskey on his face like perfume and head for the saloon with the bank roll he had from the sale of the flour. With Joseph watching over him from a distance he began to play cards and a dapper gambler seemed to lose several hands to Adam. After becoming bolder from his success Adam began betting larger amounts of money until at some point all the money they had from the sale of the flour sat in front of the fancy gambler with the biggest grin on his face anyone had ever seen. Word got around town about the foolish Mormon boy that got liquored up and gambled away all his earnings. Many of the highway men and robbers had informants in the town and they knew now that the Sharp brothers were just plum busted. So with sad faces the Sharps started home for Salt Lake with an empty wagon and empty pockets.

Some fifty miles out of Carson City the Sharps met up with a dapper stranger that handed them a huge bank roll. They had a great laugh between them all, and Adam hid the bank roll wrapped in a seal skin, in a can of axel grease for the wagon wheels. No Highwaymen or holdup men did they see until they came well into Utah and parted ways with the stranger who took the turn off road north to Corinne.