As flames raced through Salt Lake City businesses Monday night, it approached an especially vulnerable target: The towering piles of used books that fill Utah Book & Magazine, a quirky fixture on Main Street for more than half a century.

With just a few sparks, “this would have gone up fast,” relieved owner Peter Marshall said inside his store this week, letting out a sharp “whoosh” and gesturing toward its maze of books, dust and history.

A day earlier, hours after the fire, Marshall had stood near a fence that separated pedestrians from the restaurant and three bars destroyed by the flames. “Boy, I tell you, I must be blessed or something,” he marveled.

While Marshall’s store on Main Street has been open since 1974, his family has operated the business in several locations for 109 years. He began working as a kid in an earlier incarnation run by his father.

It’s that legacy that earned him the title “governor of Main Street,” a nickname that even appears on his business cards — courtesy of his sister, Helen Marshall, who helps out at the shop during the day.

“He’s been down here 62 years, and so they kind of named him that,” she said. “Everybody on the street knows him as the governor.”

(Chris Samuels | The Salt Lake Tribune) Peter Marshall walks through his store, Utah Book and Magazine, on Main Street in Salt Lake City, Wednesday, Aug. 13, 2025. The store was spared from a fire that destroyed numerous businesses next door.

Laughing, she said that’s how Marshall introduced himself to Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall when she visited the burned shops on Tuesday. The fire started in London Belle, a bar two storefronts away, and spread to White Horse Spirits and Kitchen, which shares a wall with the bookstore.

“He says, ‘well, I’m the governor of Main Street,’” Helen Marshall recalled. Mendenhall “started laughing, she’s like, we have a governor of Main?”

Despite yellow caution tape fencing off his store and a chain-link fence separating it from the burned businesses, Marshall said he is determined to stay open.

(Chris Samuels | The Salt Lake Tribune) Helen Marshall stands in front of Utah Book and Magazine on Main Street in Salt Lake City, Wednesday, Aug. 13, 2025. The store was spared from a fire that destroyed numerous businesses next door.

A century of history spared

Marshall said his shop sustained only minor water damage. He’s not sure exactly how his shop was spared — except that the brick wall it shares with White Horse remained untouched. Inside White Horse, it appears the flames never reached the wall adjoining Marshall’s store.

His grandfather, Earl L. Marshall Sr., founded the business in 1916 as Utah Coin & Antique. Marshall moves easily through the narrow aisles of the current version of the family business, surrounded by shelves stacked high with books, magazines and odd little treasures.

(Chris Samuels | The Salt Lake Tribune) Peter Marshall walks through his store, Utah Book and Magazine, on Main Street in Salt Lake City, Wednesday, Aug. 13, 2025. The store was spared from a fire that destroyed numerous businesses next door.

He isn’t sure what the rarest item currently in the shop is, but he does recall what might have been the rarest ever: a crate of original 1830 editions of the Book of Mormon his grandfather once owned — and sold for just 50 cents each back in 1916.

“If I had them today, $250,000, $300,000 each,” he said with a chuckle. “I counted 28 books in that box. Oh, my God.”

A box of different books his grandfather packed in 1916 is still tucked away in the store, he said. Back then, those sold for a nickel. Now, he said, they go for $40 to $50.

Historic treasures line the shop’s walls, like a carved mahogany humidor from the 1890s behind the checkout counter — now used to hold used books — and a cash register and adding machine from the 1930s, both of which he still uses daily.

“It’s actually one of my new ones,” Marshall said. “My grandfather had one, it was [from] 1880. Every time that we’d open it up, the wheels wore out and the drawers would fall out.”

Marshall’s father, Earl Marshall Jr., worked for decades alongside his father, Marshall Sr., running shops at various locations throughout downtown.

“We had that name for many, many years,” he said. “He was a big coin dealer.”

Marshall began working in the family business at just 8 years old — and never looked back.

“When I was 17 and my first wife was 16, I opened up Utah Book & Magazine,” he said, with help from his brothers. Not long after, the young couple bought their first house together.

“Is that young?” he asked with a shrug.

Marshall said the first version of his shop opened at 211 S. State Street and it bounced around to different downtown locations over the years. Eventually, he said, the coin and antique shop merged with his bookstore.

A maze of books and ‘knickknacks’

While his father was the antique collector, Marshall has always focused on books — and today, he estimates his store holds around half a million of them.

“I try to have a variety for everybody,” he said, gesturing to shelves filled with everything from children’s books and fiction to religion, sci-fi and horror. He laughs when people ask where the horror section is — then points to the ceiling, where Halloween decorations he’s collected over the years mark the spot.

(Chris Samuels | The Salt Lake Tribune) Decor on display at Utah Book and Magazine on Main Street in Salt Lake City, Wednesday, Aug. 13, 2025. The store was spared from a fire that destroyed numerous businesses next door.

Though not fond of technology, he admits he recently gave in — adding a computer and a credit card reader. But he’s proud to still have a landline, a choice he made after too many people borrowed his phone and walked off with it.

While Marshall doesn’t have a website or a digital inventory, he has customers who have returned for decades. Judges, lawyers, flight attendants and pilots, tourists and loyal regulars who have been coming back for years.

(Chris Samuels | The Salt Lake Tribune) Decor and items for sale at Utah Book and Magazine, on Main Street in Salt Lake City, Wednesday, Aug. 13, 2025. The store was spared from a fire that destroyed numerous businesses next door.

Every day, people visit his store to sell mostly books, but sometimes, he’ll “pick up a few knickknacks here and there.”

And while most people are still asleep, Marshall starts his day at the shop around 2 a.m., spending the early hours cleaning and organizing before opening at 7 a.m. He stays until the shop closes at 6 p.m., he said.

His philosophy, “if you retire, you die.”

Though his 11-year-old grandson is already talking about taking over the store someday.

Marshall cherishes his life’s work in the store, and he feels for his neighbors who lost their businesses in the fire. They’re like a “family,” he said, and as they look to rebuild and rejoin him on Main Street, “we all take care of each other.”

Reporter Brock Marchant contributed to this story.

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