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Utah Holiday Feasting, Reveling, Surviving
As you're preparing for the festive season, consider a few vignettes from the 1800s telling how our Utah forebears feasted, reveled, and somehow made their way through the winter holidays.The first known Utah Christmas was a multicultural affair…
Slavery of African-Americans in Early Utah
Slavery of African-Americans in Utah began with the settlement of Mormon pioneers in 1847 and lasted for 15 years until the practice was made illegal in 1862.Three slaves, named Green Flake, Hark Lay, and Oscar Crosby, came west with the first Mormon…
The Beginning of Public Libraries in Utah
Public libraries are a staple of many of Utah’s communities. Learn how public libraries got started in Utah.October is National Book Month and libraries all over Utah are celebrating with book festivals and activities to help bring readers and…
Kid Activists Honor the ‘Father of Television’
A group of school children fought in the Utah legislature to win recognition for one of the world’s most important inventors.Can you imagine the world without television? Its impact is everywhere, yet few people realize that the inventor of the…
Father Escalante and Joaquin
A story of friendship between Spanish explorer Father Escalante and the Ute boy who was his guide through the Utah territory.In July 1776, a group of Spanish explorers set out from Santa Fe, New Mexico in search of a northern route to one of…
Unsung Heroes and Heroines of Utah Agriculture
Migrant workers from Mexico have long contributed to Utah’s agricultural success. Their labor has been essential to the rural economy of the state.Utah has long relied on migrant labor for its agricultural success. In 1918, for example, sixty…
What's for Dinner? Salt Lake Valley's Prison Site
A Salt Lake Valley archaeology site holds clues to that age old question- ‘what’s for dinner?’ The surprising answer may change the way we understand Utah’s ancient past.For most of us living along the Wasatch Front today, making dinner for…
Mark Twain Comes to Utah
Mark Twain’s visit to Utah and the comical encounter he had with Brigham Young.Mark Twain is known to most of us as the author of such classics as Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. A well-known humorist, one of Twain’s earlier books, called…
Helen Zeese Papanikolas
A famous historian used her girlhood memories of Carbon County to completely change the way we understand Utah’s past.She passed away in 2004, but Helen Zeese Papanikolas is still revered in Utah as an historian whose work made it impossible to…
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…
Mormon Foodways
Each culture has its own specific food traditions, and here in Utah we have funeral potatoes!The ways people prepare and consume food are some of the most culture-specific practices to be found within communities. Here in Utah, we have a heritage of…
Julius Taylor and the Broad Ax
For four years Julius Taylor operated his black newspaper, The Broad Ax, for African Americans living in Utah. Taylor was not only a racial minority in Utah, he was also non-religious and a democrat.In the 1890s there were about six hundred African…
Martha Hughes Cannon
The story of an ambitious and successful young woman who lived in polygamy.In the late nineteenth century, Mormons in Utah practiced polygamy, an institution seen as barbaric by the rest of the country. One polygamous wife found plural marriage both…
Utah Folk Music
Utah’s rich tradition of traditional music ranges from ancient and modern Native American songs and dances to a variety of European and American musical traditions.While it is not well known, Utah has a rich heritage of traditional music, both…
From Cabinetmaker to Undertaker: Niels Lindquist
A Swedish immigrant went from furniture maker to undertaker in the Logan area during the 1800s.Neils Lindquist was an accomplished cabinetmaker who converted to Mormonism and emigrated from Sweden to Salt Lake City in 1863. He built furniture in Salt…
Zane's Antipolygamy Crusade
A key figure in the struggle over polygamy was US Supreme Court Justice Charles Zane. His tenure on the bench saw hundreds of people convicted of illegal cohabitation or polygamy, leading some to call his work an “antipolygamy crusade”.The…
Protesting the Vietnam War in Salt Lake
The anti-war movement came to Salt Lake City in 1969, culminating in a rally that the Salt Lake Tribune called “the largest peace demonstration in Utah history.”In October 1969, at the height of the Vietnam War, more than 4,000 Utahns took to the…
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…
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…
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,…