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Monticello's Hispanic Pioneers
In 1899, Ramon Gonzalez, his wife Guadalupe, and his children Romana and Prudencio, left their home in Dixon, New Mexico, to settle in Monticello, Utah. A wagon carried all their household possessions, while a few head of livestock followed on the…
My Life on Three Continents: Jewish Refugees in Utah
Utah has become home to people of many backgrounds and cultures since the first Mormon Pioneers arrived in the Salt Lake Valley in July 1847. What brought these people to Utah? The convoluted journey of one family is told in Fred Linden’s…
Intermountain Indian School
The “I” is fading fast on the mountainside above Brigham City, Utah. Winter snows threaten to erase it for good and with it, the memory of one of Utah’s more significant stories: The Intermountain Indian School, a federally-run Native American…
Jewish Pioneers of Clarion
On September 10, 1911, twelve Jewish families arrived in Gunnison, Utah, to establish a Jewish agricultural community. The group was part of the “Back to Soil” movement, which believed Jews needed to leave the city and live on farms. The…
The Bear River Massacre
The Bear River Massacre was an event that changed the landscape of northern Utah and the fate of the Shoshone people.In the early morning cold of January 29, 1863, between 270 and 400 Shoshone men, women, and children were killed by the U.S. Army…
Martha Sharouk’s Journey to America
The journey of Martha Sharouk – a young wife who left Lebanon and travelled to Utah to begin a new life – did not quite go as planned… In the winter of 1913, a young Lebanese woman stepped off the train at the Denver and Rio Grande station in…
The Gypsies are Coming!
Traveling gypsies brought excitement to small towns all over Utah in the early 1900s. To most residents of rural Utah in the early 1900s, summertime meant hauling hay, digging ditches, irrigating crops, and tending livestock. Other than the…
The Journey of Gobo Fango
Gobo Fango, an enslaved boy from southern Africa, journeyed to Utah in 1861. Born about 1855 near the Cape of Good Hope in what is now the Republic of South Africa, Gobo Fango was shaped by hardship. While still a small child, Gobo Fango’s…
Speaking American
Utah's pivotal 1919 Americanization Act impacted the state's vibrant immigrant population. When the thirteenth session of the Utah Legislature closed in March 1919, new legislation included a $4 million bond for new roads, a law preventing…
Chipeta: She Didn't Want to Come to Utah
Ute leader Chipeta – her search for peace meant the loss of her home and her way of life. Chipeta was the wife of Uncompahgre Ute leader Ouray and acted for years as a peacemaker between her people and the United States government. She stood…
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…
Utopian Dreams: Russian Pioneers in Park Valley
A group of Russian pioneers sought a place to build their religious colony far from cities and government interference. Where else would they come but Utah? “Invest Dimes and Reap Dollars in Park Valley, Utah!” That was the promise of the…
Prehistoric "Snowbirds": Fremont Indians' Life on the Move
Birds do it… So do humans. In fact, humans in Utah have been heading south for winter for more than 1500 years. Along the lower Bear River, where it stretches into the Great Salt Lake, are the remains of five prehistoric campsites. …
Working on the Railroad: Utah's Chinese Pioneers
Chinese immigrant laborers built the railroad from California to Utah. On May 10, 1869 the Union Pacific and Central Pacific Railroads joined at Utah’s Promontory Point, completing the first transcontinental railroad system in the United…
Exile at Topaz
Thousands of Japanese Americans were forced into exile in the Utah desert during World War II. Two months after the December 1941 attack by Japan on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066 mandating the…
"One Vast Contiguity of Waste": Ute Relocation to the Uinta Basin
Learn about the forced relocation of Ute people from lush central Utah to the remote Uinta Basin. In the mid-19th Century federal Indian policy shifted from Indian Removal toward the reservation system. The result for many Native groups,…
Utah Jobs Report, 1900
Learn about a variety of jobs done by Utahns at the turn of the twentieth century, and think about how jobs have changed - or not - over the last 100 years.According to the United States Census, there were 73,840 men and 10,764 women employed in Utah…
From the Earth into Bellies: Timpanogos Utes
We no longer work as close to the land as Utah’s indigenous people once did. But that doesn’t mean we don’t work for the same reasons. Learn how Timpanogos Utes made a living and how we might relate.We sometimes forget how much work was – and…
Rafael Lopez: Fugitive & Folk Hero
Rafael Lopez came to Utah to help break a strike up in Bingham Canyon in 1912. A year later, he was a fugitive – and a folk hero.When Greek miners went out on strike in 1912, the Utah Copper Company turned to Mexican labor to keep production…
Padrone System Stifled Freedom
A lot of Americans still dream of the American West as a place of freedom and opportunity. But for workers at the turn of the twentieth century, it was never quite that simple.As author Mark Twain brings Huckleberry Finn’s story to a close, we read…