W. Paul Reeve History Blazer, June 1995 Some 11,000 years ago members of the Great Basin Desert Culture left behind fascinating evidence of their existence at a site known as Danger Cave, less than two miles east of Wendover, Utah. Renowned University of Utah archaeologist Jesse D. Jennings first explored the cave in 1949 and over the next several years …
Navajo Indians
Robert S. McPherson Utah History Encyclopedia, 1994 The Navajo Indians in Utah reside on a reservation of more than 1,155,000 acres in the southeastern corner of the state. According to the 1990 census, more than half of the population of San Juan County is comprised of Navajo people, the majority of whom live south of the San Juan River. Scholars …
Goshute Indians
Dennis R. Defa Utah History Encyclopedia, 1994 The Goshute Indians are part of the larger Shoshonean-speaking Native American groups that live in the Intermountain West. Although no one knows how long the Goshutes had occupied the area where they lived when first contacted by Europeans, a date of 1,000 years ago is most probable as the time when Shoshonean speakers …
The Ancestral Puebloan Period
The Ancestral Puebloan Period in UtahWinston Hurst and Jonathan Till The Ancestral Pueblo are the ancestors of descendant Pueblo peoples who now reside in Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas. Ancestral Pueblo peoples lived in the Four Corners region, including southern Utah, from about 300 BCE to 1300 CE, and are basically identified by their strong commitment to maize (corn) agriculture. …
Cliffside Dwellings & Stunning Artifacts Show Anasazi Life
W. Paul Reeve History Blazer, April 1995 The elaborate cliff dwellings and terraced apartment houses built of stone, mud, and wood that dot the Four Corners region of southeastern Utah stand as fitting monuments to Utah’s earliest inhabitants. Evidence of hunter-gatherer bands occupying portions of present-day Utah date back to about 9,000 B.C., but the people who comprised this Desert …
Sister Augusta and Catholic Education in Utah
Bernice M. Mooney and Miriam M. Murphy History Blazer, June 1996 The most striking figure in the early history of Catholic women’s work in Utah was a Holy Cross nun, Sister Augusta. Born Amanda Anderson in 1830 in Virginia, she was reared after her mother’s death by an aunt who lived on a ranch in Ohio. The ranch had a …
He Was an Outsider in Utah but Not for Long
Lyndia Carter History Blazer, February 1996 Mathew William Dalton was a busy man in the fall of 1850. A newcomer to Ogden, he hurried to find work and get a house and shop built before winter set in. The settlers had been kind, loaning him tools and a team and wagon. They had even helped him “raise” the house. Young …
Snowslides Devastated Northern Utah in 1875
Yvette D. Ison History Blazer, April 1995 To the early Mormon settlers northern Utah was one of the coldest places on earth. Bishop Hammond of Huntsville, a former whaler in the Arctic regions, reported in the Deseret News on February 6, 1883, that the weather in Huntsville, Utah, was more severe than he had ever experienced in the regions of …
Harlan-Young Party
David Bigler Utah History Encyclopedia, 1994 The first to take wagons over the Hastings Cutoff from Fort Bridger to the Humboldt River were some 200 emigrants who crossed Utah’s Salt Desert in 1846 about three weeks in advance of the Donner-Reed party. They took the new route south of the Great Salt Lake at the urging of Lansford W. Hastings, …
Bartleson-Bidwell Party
David L. Bigler Utah History Encyclopedia, 1994 The first emigrants to cross Utah with wagons came in 1841, six years before the Mormon pioneers, this party numbered thirty-two men and one woman, who carried a baby daughter in one arm and led a horse with the other. Nancy Kelsey, barely eighteen years old and the first white woman ever to …