By Michael W. Cater, M.D. With the driving of the last spike of the transcontinental railroad at Promontory, Utah, on May 10, 1869, life in this western territory was forever changed. Minerals were plentiful, and mining developed into an important industry in Utah in the final decades of the nineteenth century. Yet mining was rough and dangerous work, very often …

Armando Solorzano, Beehive History It was a cold morning in November of 1912. Thousands of Mexicans, most of them single men, got off the train in Bingham, Utah and were taken to Utah Copper Company, where they began to work that same afternoon. The “Mexican strikebreakers,” as they were known in town, had come to replace miners who were refusing …

Born in 1851 in Chicago, Thomas grew up in Pittsburgh and married Helena Reinberg. He filled staff positions in the U.S. House of Representatives before serving as territorial secretary under governors Emery, Murray, and West. A member of the Utah Commission, he was named governor in 1889 by Benjamin Harrison. Regarding the Mormons, Thomas seemed ambivalent, favoring first the harsh …

Born in Cynthiana, Kentucky, in 1844, West attended Millersburg Academy and served in the Confederate Army, incarcerated most of the time as a prisoner of war. He married Nancy Frazer. A lawyer and a municipal judge, he was selected by Grover Cleveland to replace Eli Murray in 1886. A moderate Democrat—the first Democratic governor since Alfred Cumming—he visited imprisoned polygamists, …

A native of Cloverport, Kentucky, born in 1843, Murray attained the rank of brigadier general during the Civil War and also completed a law degree at the University of Louisville. He married Evelyn Neal and was a U.S. marshal and newspaper editor before Rutherford B. Hayes named him governor in 1880. Murray certified the election of Allen G. Campbell (who …

Born in 1830 in Penobscot, Maine, Emery graduated from Dartmouth, studied law in Albany, New York, and was a federal tax collector in the South before Ulysses S. Grant named him governor of Utah Territory in 1875. Despite the bitter Mormon-Gentile feud of the late nineteenth century, Emery accomplished election reforms and expanded government services for a fast-growing population. When …

Born near Columbus, Ohio, in 1819, Axtell attended Oberlin and Western Reserve Colleges, married Adaline S. Williams, practiced law in Michigan and California, and served in Congress (1867-71) as both a Democrat and a Republican. Ulysses S. Grant named him governor of Utah Territory in 1875. More moderate than his immediate predecessors, he was harshly criticized by the growing anti-Mormon …