1861-1862

Third movement for Statehood begins in December 1861.

1863

Dry farming, as a type of commercial agriculture, begins in Utah.

1868

Zions Mercantile Cooperative Institution formed as first United States department store.

1870

Utah Territory enfranchises women.

1872

The Utah Bar admitted its first two women Phoebe Couzins and Georgianna Snow.

1879

First telephone service established in Ogden, Utah.

1880

Ogden decides to adopt the electric light. They decided to light the city for $3,000 per year, with 60 days trial of the light before the contract was formally entered into.

1881

On September 7 a game of chess by telephone was played between Salt Lake and Ogden on Sunday. Salt Lake won. This is probably the first instance of telephonic chess on record.

1882

Edmunds Act passed by Congress making it unlawful to cohabitate.

Mormon women opened the Deseret Hospital, which was almost entirely managed and staffed by female directors and doctors. Additionally, LDS Relief Society women became involved in a number of enterprises designed to help care for the state's poor through donations of money, food, and materials, and managed business operations such as silk raising and grain storage.

1883

Children's Service Society of Utah is organized for day care.  It later accepted orphans and handled juvenile court cases.

1887

Edmunds-Tucker Act is passed by Congress.

Congress denies women in Utah right to vote.

1890

LDS Church President Wilford Woodruff issues the Manifesto ending church-sanctioned polygamy.

Half of Salt Lake City's 45,000 residents are non-Mormons as the flood of twenty million immigrants coming to the United States--in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries--find its way to Utah.

1892

B'Nai Israel Temple dedicated in Salt Lake City.

The Legislative Assembly changes the University of Deseret's name to the University of Utah.

1894

Congress deeds sixty acres of Fort Douglas land on the city's east bench for the University of Utah campus, moving it from its downtown location on 300 West.

1896

Utah becomes the 45th state on January 4 and Heber M. Wells is inaugurated as the first governor.

With statehood, Utah women regain the right to vote.

1908

Natural Bridges made a National Monument.

1909

Discovery of Rainbow Bridge.

1910

Rainbow Bridge made a National Monument.

1911

Strawberry Reservoir is completed.

The Utah State Legislature designated the sego lily as the state flower.

1912

Kanab elects an all-female mayor and town board, the first in United States history.

1914

Auto racing begins on the Bonneville Salts Flats near the Great Salt Lake.

Last pole of the transcontinental telephone line is placed in Wendover.

1915

State Capitol is completed.

Joe Hill executed, Utah's first exercise in capital punishment.

Dinosaur National Monument founded.

Utah passes first state anti-marijuana law.