Preservation Office Utah Division of State History History Blazer, September 1995 Constructed in 1927 the Bigelow/Ben Lomond Hotel is both architecturally and historically significant. It is an excellent and rare example of the Italian Renaissance Revival style in Utah—popular in America in the 1920s but seldom employed in the Beehive State. The building—located on the southeast corner of Ogden’s most …
The Civilian Conservation Corps
Kenneth W. Baldridge Utah History Encyclopedia, 1994 When Franklin D. Roosevelt took over as president in March 1933 the country was in the midst of the worst depression ever experienced in the United States. Among the organizations established to help relieve the situation was the Civilian Conservation Corps, not only one of the first to begin operations across the country …
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. …
Clean Clothes Blowing in the Breeze
Miriam B. Murphy History Blazer May 1996 More Utahns seem to be writing or compiling family histories nowadays. Many are full of details usually not found in other kinds of historical publications. The story of the Lewis Leo and Hortense Cope Munson family is one such book. Born in the year of Utah’s statehood, 1896, Leo Munson spent much of …
Garfield County Airport Has Unusual Hangar
Allan Kent Powell and Miriam B. Murphy History Blazer October 1995 In the realm of airplane hangar construction and design the Garfield County Airport Hangar is truly an oddity. Its barn-like construction of native materials is a testimony to the ranching/agricultural background of the men who built it. Having no previous experience in designing or building an airplane hangar, they …
Rhymes Filled Children’s Autograph Books
Miriam B. Murphy History Blazer May 1996 Fifty years ago a Salt Lake City schoolteacher, Marguerite Ivins Wilson, studied the rhymes Utah children wrote in their classmates’ autograph books. She concluded that the rhymes reflected “both the spirit of the age in which they have been produced and the attitudes of the children” who wrote them. The material she studied …
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 …
Uinta Basin Group Trekked to the 1933 World’s Fair
Miriam B. Murphy History Blazer September 1995 In December 1932, in the depths of the Great Depression, eighty-seven Uinta Basin residents made plans to attend the 1933 World’s Fair, Century of Progress, in Chicago. They were Future Farmers of America members from the Toyack Chapter, Central Union High School, Roosevelt, Utah, and their goal was nothing less than the longest …
Floods
Linda Sillitoe Salt Lake County, Centennial History The 1981–82 water year had broken all records; then September 1982 climaxed with ten times more moisture than normal. A sense of foreboding grew valley-wide, as autumn mud slides closed Big and Little Cottonwood canyons and creeks flooded, damaging three hundred homes, roads, and bridges. At September’s end, Governor Matheson declared a state …
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. …