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Twenty Wells
A site near present-day Grantsville provided temporary relief to the Donner party before their dangerous push across the Great Salt Lake Desert.In 1846, a series of overland parties found relief at a site on the south end of the Great Salt Lake near…
Turkeys: Industrial Change Makes it Everyone’s Bird
This Thanksgiving, you might enjoy a meal that includes a roasted turkey. What are the chances it was born and raised here in Utah?Few people might associate Utah with one of America’s favorite holiday meals: turkeys. But, the turkey industry in…
Town that Drowned: Keetley
Known for its history as a settlement for displaced Japanese-Americans during World War II, this ranching, mining, and farm town in Wasatch County was buried by the Jordanelle Reservoir.
If you’ve ever been to the Jordanelle Reservoir, you may not…
Town that Drowned: Hite
Underneath Lake Powell is a drowned ghost town that was once an important mining hub and crossroads for the Colorado River community.
If you’ve ever visited the north end of Lake Powell, you may have stopped by the Hite Marina for a public restroom…
Town that Drowned: Big Village at Willard
The historic settlements underneath Willard Bay were submerged twice - first by years of dirt, dust, and debris and then again by a flooded reservoir.Buried under the Willard Bay reservoir on the northeast end of Great Salt Lake is not one but two…
Toll of Unemployment: the Suicide of Mary Cook
The nationwide depression of the 1890s produced unprecedented levels of unemployment. One unfortunate casualty of the resulting stress and anxiety was Mary Cook, a young mother from Utah County. In 1894, a young mother from Pleasant Grove named…
To Utah by Stagecoach
The stagecoach is a legendary symbol of the American West, part of a transportation network that spanned the continent. How did Utah fit into this network? Traveling to Utah was difficult – to say the least – in the mid-19th Century. Major…
There’s Fluoride in the Water!
Public health campaigns have long sparked fears of government overreach. In the mid-twentieth century, for example, dentists lobbied to add fluoride to Utah’s water supply to support tooth health. Learn more about the decades-long public uproar.
In…
The Woman’s Exponent
Mormon women wrote and published a newspaper for and about Mormon women. The paper had a small circulation and was replaced with the Relief Society Magazine shortly after the newspaper declined.In 1872, a unique publication for women emerged in Utah.…
The Wolf Years
Anxiety about growing wolf populations led to over-hunting in the early 1900s that nearly eliminated wolf populations in northern Utah.More than a hundred years ago, a massive migration of gray wolves into Utah’s northern counties sparked a full…
The Valley Tan
As the Utah War settled to an occupation of the Utah Territory, Kirk Anderson, with financial backing from John Hartnett, started Utah’s second newspaper the Valley Tan, targeting Camp Floyd’s population of soldiers as well as the Gentiles…
The Utah Transit Authority
Public desire for mass transit in Salt Lake City sought to relieve some of the traffic on roads throughout the city, and popular demand has resurfaced every few years as a response to air and road conditions. In 1970 the Utah Transit Authority, or…
The United Order of Orderville
The United Order of Orderville, a Utopian living experiment, thrived for a decade in southern Utah.When people hear the term “communal living,” what often comes to mind is a group of hippies, not a group of 19th Century Mormons. However, the…
The Town that Couldn't Keep its Name
A Grand County mining town that changed its name three times in less than thirty years.More than a century ago, the town of Ballard, in central Grand County, began to sprout up around a coal mine. The town, which took its name from Henry Ballard, the…
The Thistle Mudslide
A giant landslide in April 1983 obliterated the tiny town of Thistle in Utah County.In 1983, the most costly landslide in US history swept down on the tiny town of Thistle, damming up the Spanish Fork River, and severing the rail line that connects…
The Termination and Restoration of Utah’s Paiute Indian Tribe
The federal termination and restoration of the lands of the Paiute Indian Tribe illustrate the complicated relationship between state, federal, and tribal claims to land.On September 1, 1954, President Dwight Eisenhower signed Public Law 83-762,…
The Strawberry Valley Project
A federal project diverted water promised to the Ute Tribe into southern Utah County. This water grab harmed Ute claims to land in the Uintah Basin. In 1905 the federal government authorized the Strawberry Valley Project. Designed to divert water…
The Story of the English Sparrow
A bird once considered to be helpful pest control, the invasive English Sparrow made it on a legislative “hit list” in the 1800s.Most Utahns have heard the tale of how in 1848 a flock of California gulls swooped down and gorged themselves on a…
The Spark That Ignited the Black Hawk War
Conflict and rising tensions between a group of Ute Indians and Mormons in Manti, Utah led to an incident that sparked Utah’s Black Hawk War. In 1865, on the same day Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee were negotiating an end to the American Civil…
The Shoshone Colony of Washakie
The founding and eventual demise of the Shoshoni settlement known as Washakie.In 1880, a handful of Shoshoni families and a few Mormon missionaries settled on a plot of land near the Utah-Idaho border and called the settlement Washakie in honor of an…