Jane Beckwith Utah History Encyclopedia The history of the settlement of western Millard County has been a string of boom and bust cycles, most of them associated with water. Pioneers struggled to tame the tail end of the Sevier River with dams, canals, and reservoirs. By the 1910s the major dams were stable and a boom came as a result …
How Trains Helped Win a War
Richard C. Roberts Beehive History, 8 The good times of the 1920s came to an end in Ogden, as in other parts of the United States, during the Great Depression of the 1930s. Business declined, and many companies and industries even went broke. The railroads suffered along with other businesses. Both freight and passenger traffic declined. Thor Blair, who ran …
Utahn Survives the Attack at Pearl Harbor
Allan Kent Powell History Blazer March 1996 One of the most remarkable survival stories of the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, is that of Walter Staff. Born in Magna, Utah, he grew up in Salt Lake City where he attended South High School before joining the Navy in February 1940. He was assigned to the battleship …
The Japanese Agricultural Colony at Keetley, Wasatch County
Jeffrey D. Nichols History Blazer, June 1995 The story of the Japanese internment camps during World War II at Topaz, Millard County, and elsewhere is generally well known. A lesser-known story is that of Keetley Farms, an agricultural colony of “voluntarily” relocated Japanese Americans situated roughly halfway between Park City and Heber City. The move to Keetley took place against …
Topaz: An Account of Japanese Americans Interned in Utah During WWII
Yoshiko Uchida Beehive History 25 In September 1942 we were shipped by train to a concentration camp which we knew to be somewhere in Utah and was called Topaz. There were no trees, or growth of any kind, except clumps of dry greasewood. We were entering the Sevier Desert some fifteen miles west of Delta, and the surroundings were now …
The War Effort at Home
John D. Barton History of Duchesne County Patriotism characterized life on the home front during World War II. On 2 January 1942, a large front-page headline in the Roosevelt Standard read: For a Happier New Year Resolution I Resolve To Give First Consideration During 1942 To The Defense Effort Of My Country! Five days after Pearl Harbor, the Uintah Basin …