John Cobb’s Railton Special, 1947 Jessie Embry and Ron Shook Utah Historical Quarterly 65 Fall 1997 In the United States, the Bonneville Salt Flats had an inauspicious start as a racecourse. In 1896 travel promoter Bill Rishel crossed the flats while helping locate a coast-to-coast route for a bicycle race. He discovered the salt flats were not bicycle friendly as …
Utah’s Capitols
Everett L. Cooley Utah Historical Quarterly 27 July 1959 Symbols play a significant role in human relationships. Just as national and state flags have symbolic meaning to those living under a specially designated ensign, so too have capitols their special symbolism. Closely associated with the rise of nationalism and sovereignty is the adoption of symbols representing a nation’s dreams and …
President Harding’s 1923 Visit to Utah
W. Paul Reeve History Blazer July 1995 President Warren G. Harding’s 1923 visit to Utah was part of a broader tour of the western United States designed to bring him “closer to the people and their conditions.” After touring Colorado, Utah, Idaho, and other states, he proceeded to Alaska, his primary destination, and became the first president to visit that …
The Civilian Conservation Corps Was a Boon to Utah
W. Paul Reeve History Blazer, February 1995 Compared to the rest of the nation Utah was hit particularly hard by the Great Depression of the 1930s. In 1933 Utah’s annual per capita income of $300 was a mere 80 percent of the national average, and 35.8 percent of Utah’s work force was unemployed. The New Deal legislation of Franklin D. …
Helen Hofmann Bertagnole—“Utah’s Queen of Swing”
W. Paul Reeve History Blazer, September 1995 In August 1938, “Utah’s Queen of Swing,” Helen Hofmann Bertagnole, added a third Utah state golf title to her string of victories, prompting one local sportswriter to declare her “the greatest woman golfer ever to wander the Utah fairways.” Less than a decade later her exploits on the golf course as well as …
Daredevil Georgie White Ran Utah’s Great Rivers
Jeffrey D. Nichols History Blazer, August 1995 “Running” Utah’s rivers is an activity that dates back at least to John Wesley Powell’s well-documented explorations in the 19th century. The Powell parties used small wooden boats. Earlier explorers and trappers negotiated the dangerous white water of the Green and Colorado in “bull boats,” crude wooden frames with hides stretched across them. …
Utah’s First State Park
Allan Kent Powell History Blazer, November 1996 Wasatch Mountain State Park, located along the eastern slope of the Wasatch Mountains, became a reality a century after the settlement of Heber City and Midway in 1859. The alpine Heber Valley was characterized by plenty of water, good pasture and farm land, and, compared to many settlements founded at the same time, …
“Alphabet” Agencies in Utah County
Richard Neitzel Holzapfel History of Utah County When Roosevelt took office in March 1933, the first of his New Deal programs, the Federal Emergency Relief Act of 1933 (FERA), was approved on 12 May. Although the act extended federal participation in relief for two more years, it changed the nature of the funding from loans to direct grants to the …
Religious Diversity in Utah’s Dixie
Douglas D. Alder and Karl F. Brooks History of Washington County The preponderance of Mormons in Dixie does not mean that other Christian denominations do not exist in Washington County. Roman Catholicism was important in the life of people in Silver Reef when Reverend Lawrence Scanlan built a chapel, hospital, and school there in 1878. Within a decade, however, Silver …
Utah Jazz
Dave Blackwell Utah History Encyclopedia, 1994 Although the story of Jazz basketball is a tale of two cities—Salt Lake City and New Orleans—Charles Dickens did not have the Jazz in mind when he wrote of the best of times, the worst of times. But more than a century later he could have. After the move from New Orleans in 1979, …