John R. Sillito Utah Historical Quarterly, Summer 1981 Olivia McHugh was born and raised in Kentucky. After graduating from Kentucky State University and the Sargeant School of Education in Cambridge, Massachusetts, McHugh worked as a teacher at Randolph Macon Women’s College and the Kentucky Institute for the Blind. She also served as director of the Louisville municipal gymnasium. McHugh moved …
Joe Hill and the I. W. W.
Linda Sillito The History of Salt Lake County Joel Hagglund, better known as Joe Hill, organized for the Industrial Workers of the World and penned radical songs to aid the labor movement. One evening in January 1914, Hill asked a Socialist doctor in Murray to treat a bullet wound in his chest that he said he received while defending a …
Utah’s Immigrants at the Turn of the Century
Thomas G. Alexander Utah, the Right Place Condensed by Brittany Nelson As Utahns struggled to make industrial and urban life more humane, the composition of its population changed rapidly. Although people of British ancestry remained the majority in the state, each train that pulled into the railroad stations of Utah’s major cities and mining centers seemed like a caricature of …
Ogden Defeats Salt Lake City in a War of the Wheels
Lyndia Carter History Blazer, December 1996 It had to be one of the greatest rivalries of all time in Utah—the intense competition between Ogden and Salt Lake City during the early years of statehood. The national “Examiner-Journal Yellow Fellow Relay Race” of 1896 showed just how lively the rivalry could become. Promoters for the Hearst newspapers thought a transcontinental bicycle …
A Bicyclist Challenges the Great Salt Lake Desert
Lyndia Carter History Blazer, April 1996 A formidable wasteland of salt overlying a sea of mud, the Great Salt Lake Desert challenged travelers in Utah in the 19th century. Native Americans skirted the salty wilderness. Early immigrants usually chose the California Trail through Idaho to avoid it, at least until Lansford W. Hastings suggested a shorter way. After all, John …
The First Cars in Two Small Towns
W. Paul Reeve History Blazer, October 1996 On October 14, 1899, William McKinley, riding in a Stanley Steamer, became the first U. S. president to use an automobile. About a year later the first such newfangled machines were seen in Utah. However, the high cost of the early autos kept the fresh technology out of the hands of most Utahns. …
The Bamberger Electric Railway
Richard C. Roberts & Richard W. Sadler The History of Weber County The Bamberger Electric Railway was built under the leadership of Simon Bamberger, pioneer Utah coal-mine operator and railroad entrepreneur. Bamberger projected the Ogden-Salt Lake City line as a steam line as early as 1891; and in 1908 Ogden was connected to Salt Lake City on what was known …
The Rise and Fall of Ogden’s Packing Industry
Miriam B. Murphy History Blazer, June 1996 In 1901 a group of men organized the Ogden Packing Company with a capital investment of $7,500. In 1906 the first packing plant was built. During the next decade the facility was constantly expanded until by 1917 the Ogden Packing & Provision Company, as it was then called, encompassed almost six acres or …
Traveling Gypsies Brought an Exotic Lifestyle to Rural Utah
W. Paul Reeve History Blazer, February 1995 To most residents of rural Utah in the early 1900s summertime meant hauling hay, digging ditches, irrigating crops, and tending livestock. Other than the usual dances and town parties there was little diversion from the monotony of farm labor—that is until traveling bands of Gypsies began making appearances and causing stirs of excitement. …
Life Was Precarious in Turn-of-the-Century Utah
Becky Bartholomew History Blazer, August 1996 The autobiography of Florence Thompson reveals how precarious life could be for citizens of rural Utah at the turn of the century. Florence was born in 1891 near Lawrence, a tiny community a few miles north of Castle Dale, Emery County. Her first brush with death came at age seven when she contracted typhoid …