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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…
VJ Day in Utah
Victory over Japan Day, the day that the Japanese government announced its surrender to the US, Utahns celebrated in the streets. Celebrations were complicated by uncertainty and fear from the Topaz Relocation Camp near Delta. On August 15, 1945, the…
Utah’s Military Industrial Complex
Hill Air Force Base is Utah’s sixth largest employer and military spending creates over $9 billion in economic activity for the State. Learn about the historic roots of Utah’s “Military Industrial Complex.”When US President Dwight Eisenhower…
Utah’s First Armistice Day
Across Utah, the end of World War I was met with large celebrations. The excitement across the state seemed to function like a collective sigh of relief.In 1918, the signing of the armistice with Germany that effectively ended World War I became the…
Utah's First Masonic Lodge
Utah’s first Masonic Lodge was established by American soldiers with a lot of time on their hands.You may be familiar with the imposing Egyptian-style Masonic Temple in downtown Salt Lake City, but did you know that this wasn’t the first Masonic…
USS Utah Silver Service
In 1909, more than 26,000 Utah schoolchildren helped purchase the silver service used on the American battleship USS Utah.$10,000 is a lot of money today. It was even more in 1909, particularly when it was spent to buy a bunch of silver platters and…
The Salina POW Camp Shooting
A shooting in a Salina prisoner of war camp killed nine prisoners and wounded over 20 others. The motive for the shooting remains unclear.At 12:25 a.m. on Sunday, July 8, 1945, two months after Germany’s surrender in World War II, the report of a…
The Indian Scare That Never Was
An alliance between Mormons and Shoshone Indians put the non-Mormon residents of Corinne on edge. Concern over an alleged uprising by the alliance shook the town to its foundations.In 1875, fears of an armed uprising by Shoshone Indians swept through…
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…
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…
The Adventure of Bobby Donohue
Any parent who has ever lost a youngster in a crowd can imagine Park City resident Bridget Donohue’s panic when she couldn’t find her thirteen-year-old son, Bobby. Believing he had gone to nearby Heber in the fall of 1898, Bridget must have…
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…
Navajo Code Talker Samuel Holiday
Meet Samuel Holiday, whose traditional Navajo upbringing shaped his work as a code talker and changed the course of World War II.When Samuel Holiday was forced to attend a government boarding school for Native American children, he was forbidden to…
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…
Massacre at Table Point
The violent 1850 massacre of Timpanogos Utes at Rock Canyon and Table Point in present-day Utah County.In the winter of 1850, following a pitched battle on the banks of the Provo River, the remnants of Utah Valley’s Ute population scattered, hoping…
Manuelito
Manuelito was one of the last Navajo leaders to surrender to the US military in the late 1860s.Born near the Bear Ears in extreme southeastern Utah, the man known to whites as Manuelito and to the Navajo, or Dine, as Man of Dark Plants Emerging and…
Japanese Fire Balloons Reach Utah During WWII
The Japanese bombing of Hawaii’s Pearl Harbor brought the United States into World War II in 1941. But one of the best-kept secrets of the War was a Japanese air offensive on the US mainland using fire balloon bombs, some of which actually reached…
Hoop Mania Sweeps Utah
Utah women were captivated by “hoop mania” back in the 1860s. The fashionable hoop-skirt swept through Mormon society.The headline on the September 7, 1859 issue of Salt Lake’s Valley Tan newspaper read “Progress of the Hoop Mania.” The…
Gus Faust - American Doughboy
Utah sent thousands of infantrymen into World War I where they faced unimaginable conditions on the battlefield. But when the war ended, the battle continued at home, where returning soldiers faced a changing economy, uncertain job prospects, and a…
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…