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Kit Hansen
A newspaper article about a robbery reveals more than the story of a crime in Salt Lake City. It also tells us about the history of racism in Salt Lake City.A little more than a century ago, a man was robbed on the streets of Salt Lake City. Hardly…
The Circleville Massacre
Tensions between white settlers and Native Americans resulted in the massacre of over a dozen Paiutes in Circleville, Utah.In 1866, one of the worst tragedies in Utah history occurred in the town of Circleville on what is now the Piute-Garfield…
Evans Family Singers
The death of two brothers in the Winter Quarters mining blast was made especially tragic by their recent success as a part of their family’s musical performance troupe.In 1900, two brothers, David and Richard Evans, were killed in a tremendous…
The Salt Palace and the End of Salt Lake’s Japan Town
A small area of downtown Salt Lake City used to be “Japan Town”, an area that served as the focus of the city’s Japanese American community. The area was demolished in the 1960s in order to make room for the Salt Palace.These days, if you turn…
Keetley Farms
Keetley Farm was an agricultural settlement for Japanese Americans during World War II.Many Utahns know the story of the internment camps built to imprison Japanese Americans during World War Two. Utah was even home to one such camp at Topaz in…
The Ogdenites
Followers of Marie Ogden created a unique religious community just outside of Monticello.In 1933, the followers of Marie Ogden arrived in San Juan County's Dry Valley and began to create their version of God's kingdom. Ogden had dabbled in the occult…
The 24th Infantry Regiment
Nearly 600 enlisted African American soldiers and their families migrated to Salt Lake City in 1896. These soldiers discovered that Utahns’ attitudes towards African Americans were much like the rest of the country, and faced racial discrimination…
Mormons Sing At Mass
A friendship between a Mormon settler and a Catholic priest led to the performance of an all-Mormon choir at a high mass in St. George.In 1879, the Mormon Tabernacle in St. George became the site of a Catholic High Mass. Miners, many of them…
B’nai Israel
Utah’s first Jewish congregation, B’nai Israel, remains a symbol of the state’s first Jewish pioneers.When the first permanent Jewish settlers in Utah celebrated the high holy day of Yom Kippur a little less than 150 years ago, they did so in 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…
Smallpox in Koosharem
A smallpox epidemic once tore through a tiny Utah town in Sevier County. A lack of services and miscommunications complicate the story of small town and disease in Utah. In 1900, the village of Koosharem in found itself in the throes of a major…
Christmas in Early Utah
Christmas in early Utah was a festive event, filled with parties, gifts, and games. There’s a lot of debate these days about the place Christmas should occupy in American culture. Some, including Utahns, argue that we need to put Christ back into…
Oscar Eliason, Utah's Homegrown Magician
In 1899, the Utah illusionist known as “Dante the Great” died of a gunshot wound to the abdomen in the tiny Australian town of Dubbo.Born Oscar Eliason to Swedish immigrant parents, the magician began his career at the age of twenty with a…
How Cremation Came to Utah
In 1877, a cremation was scheduled to take place in Salt Lake City. The body to be burned was Charles F. Winslow's, a doctor from Boston, Massachusetts, who died of heart failure earlier that week on July 7th.When Winslow's friends read his will the…
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…
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…