Utah Stories from the Beehive Archive

Browse Items (97 total)

  • Tags: County: Statewide

greatsaltlake_oli2_202207_lrg-2.jpg
The story of water in Utah is complex, and rifts often arise in unexpected places. The fact that water sustains us all can sometimes be easy to overlook, but ultimately it an issue we cannot ignore and to which we must constantly adapt. Utah is…

North_State_Road_Accident_Scene_Fire_Plug.jpg
Firefighting is dangerous work. It also requires a lot of water! Today we are used to seeing fire hydrants in every neighborhood, but for many Utahns at the turn of the 20th century, such community water infrastructure was completely new. In the…

Screen Shot 2022-10-20 at 4.40.51 PM.png
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…

Giardia_lamblia_SEM_8698_lores.jpg
If you or your dog have ever gotten sick drinking untreated water, you've probably heard of giardia. Chlorine is regularly used in water treatment plants across Utah today to fight this deadly water parasite, but some of its earliest opponents…

CCC_Slide_Show_Jack_Conway_Photo.jpg
During the depths of the Great Depression, thousands of young men went to work on over one thousand water projects in Utah. Learn about some of the projects that survive to this day. In the 1930s, there was no shortage of work to be done on Utah's…

Bathrooms.jpg
Most of us take for granted the luxury of having running water inside of our homes. But, indoor plumbing is a relatively new phenomenon that has made life significantly easier! At the turn of the twentieth century, just 1% of homes in the United…

IMG_3681.JPG
Utah communities regularly wish for more rainfall, especially during years of drought. But can they do more than just pray? Learn how scientists in the 1950s harnessed technology to make their own rain. Today, Utahns experiencing drought due to…

CRcommission.jpg
In 1922, Utah joined the Colorado River Compact as arid Western states started to scramble for equal access to the waters of the Colorado River. But taming nature with this legal agreement did not come... naturally. In 1922, seven states in the…

20221001002_page02.jpg
Maybe you’ve heard it before: “The Nile is the longest river in the world. The Amazon is the largest. But the Colorado is one of the hardest working.” Learn why. Did you know a quarter of Utah’s water comes from one river? That river is the…

Dominy NA-BF717_REMEMD_G_20100428195748-2.jpg
Floyd Dominy was more than a government bureaucrat. As commissioner for the federal Bureau of Reclamation, Dominy was a lightning rod for the controversy over humanity’s relationship to the natural environment and had an outsized impact on the…

Screen Shot 2022-06-10 at 12.42.39 PM.png
Water law in the West can be complicated. Find out how river runners helped the government decide who owns the riverbed of the Colorado Basin, and why that even matters to the public. In the late 1920s, the state of Utah wanted to use the riverbeds…

Joe_s_Valley_Reservoir_P_1.jpg
Stocking Utah’s waterways with sport fish is a practice that goes back more than a century – so long ago that many people may think these introduced species are native. Find out how this impacts Utah’s true native fishes. Setting up beside a…

Tanner_map_part_J1.jpg
For almost a hundred years, explorers and mapmakers recorded a river that ran west from Utah out to the Pacific Ocean, despite no such waterway ever even existing. From the 1770s to the 1840s, a majority of explorers, politicians, and white settlers…

Mechanical_Mole.jpg
The Central Utah Project – which is still under construction – began with plenty of optimism and ambition. But politics and the inherent difficulty of moving mountains nearly sank the project. Learn how it survived. The Central Utah Project –…

00200_1947_cupmap-3.jpg
The vast plumbing infrastructure of the Central Utah Project is the culmination of Utah’s desires to move water to where we want it to be. Find out how complicated and contentious this endeavor has been. By the mid-twentieth century, the water of…

1000_South_Canal_Looking_West_Dredging_of_Canal.jpg
When members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints first arrived in Utah in 1847, they set about changing Utah’s arid environment with irrigation techniques and canals that affect our landscape today. Cultural landscapes are a…

Irrigation_Canals_P_9.jpg
Utah’s limited water supply needs to be closely monitored! But this is nothing new. In Utah’s settler communities, the local watermaster was a vital figure, although not always the most popular one. Utah’s irrigation system of canals, ditches,…

Screen Shot 2021-09-22 at 1.06.05 PM.png
Public health is a common good that communities have long rallied around. In the early 20th Century, the highly infectious typhoid disease brought health experts and Utah’s citizens together to demand clean water and upgraded public water…

San_Juan_River_dry_1932.jpg
The 1934 drought that ravaged the nation was a natural disaster that came at the worst possible time for Utahns. Find out how officials helped guide the state through this catastrophe with help from the federal government. In 1934, a historic drought…

Couple_Does_Yard_Work.jpg
Each summer, as the snowpack dwindles and drought restrictions come into play, most Utahns keep up a small oasis in the desert – their front lawns. Learn why more than half of Utah’s valuable household water is used outside to sprinkle this…
Output Formats

atom, dcmes-xml, json, omeka-json, omeka-xml, rss2