Browse Items (16 total)
Sort by:
West Desert Wasteland: Pollution and Sovereignty in Rural Utah
Just around 45 miles west of Salt Lake City is a vast landscape shrouded in mystery and controversy. It’s also a holding place for some of the US military’s deadliest materials.
Perhaps no part of Utah suffers as much disregard as Utah’s arid…
“Rich Diggins in Our Immediate Vicinity:” Brigham Young vs. Patrick Connor
Conflict between Brigham Young and US Army Colonel Patrick Connor personified the tension between mining versus agriculture as suitable ways of life in the Utah Territory. But the reality was not quite as stark as either man made it out to be.Mormon…
Water Warnings from Great Basin Caves
Ancient caves in Utah’s arid West Desert may hold key information to Utah’s uncertain water future.
Formed under the waves of ancient Lake Bonneville over 10,000 years ago, Danger Cave was home to members of the Desert Archaic culture. Located in…
Utah’s Expensive Flooding Quick-Fix: The 1987 Bangerter Pumps
Out in Utah’s West Desert is a massive $60 million infrastructure project that hasn’t been used in over thirty years. Can you guess what it is and why it was made?
In the 1980’s, a flooding Great Salt Lake threatened transportation, industry,…
The Honerine Drain Tunnel's Poisonous Orchards
The evil queen gave Snow White a poisonous apple that sent her into a magical deep sleep, but in Tooele County, a mining company used run-off water polluted with heavy metals to grow their toxic orchards.
In 1933, a Tooele mining company called the…
Folk Artists Work to Preserve Cultural Traditions
It might be easy to think that the production of folk art isn’t really “work.” But whether or not folk artists make a living through their creativity, their labors require hard-earned mastery of skills. Learn about two Utah women whose art was…
Iosepa: An Unlikely Hawaiian Home
The voyage of Hawaiian Islanders to the windswept desert of Skull Valley could only have happened in Utah. Once established in Utah in 1847, the Mormon Church drew thousands of new converts who came to build a new home in “Zion.” By the…
William Rishel’s Bike Ride
The 100-mile summer bike ride of William Rishel and Charlie Emise across the Great Salt Lake Desert almost ended in disaster.
In 1896, to promote his growing chain of national newspapers, publisher William Randolph Hearst cooked up a wildly…
Edwin Bryant's Mule Ride
Nine men riding mules journeyed across the Great Salt Lake Desert in a single scorching August day. On August 3, 1846, Edwin Bryant woke up at 1:30 a.m. The silence around him seemed ominous. Camped this night on the Cedar Mountains at the…
What's so Special about Utah's Danger Cave?
A seemingly non-descript cave in Utah’s west desert holds the key to understanding Utah’s ancient past.To the untrained eye, Danger Cave near Wendover, Utah, is utterly unremarkable. But ask any archaeologist about this dusty desert cave and…
Mayor and Salt Flats Racer Ab Jenkins
Salt Lake City mayor, Ab Jenkins, was known for his fearless racing speeds along the Salt Flats in Tooele County.On Labor Day 1950, Utah native Ab Jenkins broke a bundle of national and world speed records on Utah's salt flats. He was 67.Born in…
Mervyn Sharp Bennion
A typical rural Utah boy, Mervyn Bennion became a war hero during World War II. He was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for his service on Pearl Harbor.Born to a large Tooele County family in 1887, Mervyn Sharp Bennion, by all accounts, lived…
T. H. Jefferson’s Map
A mysterious traveler, T.H. Jefferson published a map of the California Trail in 1849. The map contained valuable information about the waterless stretch of desert west of the Great Salt Lake.In 1849, a map of the California Trail was published by a…
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…
Wendover and the Atomic Bomb
In 1945, the world's first nuclear bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, by the crew of the bomber Enola Gay. Most of us have been taught about the destruction that occurred from the atomic blast, but did you know that the tiny Utah town of Wendover…
Goshute Draft Resistance
Goshute Indians in Utah were vocal resisters of the draft during World War I. In 1917, a little less than a month after the United States entered the maelstrom of World War One, a bill passed Congress requiring all male residents of the country…