Text by Janell Tuttle photographs from the Utah State Historical Society Aerial of Alta and Snowbird Alta is nestled in the Wasatch Mountains of Little Cottonwood Canyon. When silver was discovered in 1864 people moved to the area and the area grew until the 1880s. At this time the value of silver declined and the population of the town decreased …
Coalville
Martha Sonntag Bradley Utah History Encyclopedia, 1994 Summit County’s early history is largely defined by a trail. The road through Echo Canyon taken by a series of immigrant groups, some famous for the disasters that befell them, others for the success of their colonization efforts, became the line that drew history in this mountainous canyon to the northeast of the …
Utah’s “Ugly Duckling” Salt Flats
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 State Historical Society
Glen M. Leonard Utah History Encyclopedia, 1994 On 22 July 1897, in response to a call from Utah’s first state governor, twenty-seven citizens led by journalist-lawyer Jerrold Letcher organized the Utah Historical Society in Salt Lake City, with Franklin D. Richards as president and Letcher as recording secretary (1897–1915). Created on the fiftieth anniversary of Mormon arrival, the society set …
Draper Irrigation Canal
By Adam R. Eastman, PhD Excitement and optimism defined the local outlook in Salt Lake and Utah counties a century ago. New irrigation projects and cash crops combined with new processing plants and transportation infrastructure to create an agricultural boom in Utah. Bluffdale and the Jordan Narrows were at the epicenter of those developments. The Salt Lake and Utah electric …
History to Go
For over twenty years History to Go has been a rich source for Utah history, mined by teachers, students, researchers, and the public. We are pleased to report that History to Go now has a new online home under the banner of the Utah Historical Quarterly. All content is reorganized according to the latest scholarly thinking. Content is more …
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 …
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 …
Preston Nutter Made Utah the Home of His Cattle Kingdom
Preston Nutter ranch Max Evans History Blazer, November 1995 When Preston Nutter died in January 1936 at the age of 86, the Salt Lake Telegram described him as “Utah’s last great cattle king” and “one of the last links between the old west and the new.” As “king” of the range, Nutter was one of the best known cattle barons …
The Telegraph was the Information Highway of the 1860s
Miriam B. Murphy History Blazer, October 1995 On May 24, 1844, the message “What hath God wrought” was sent by telegraph from Baltimore, Maryland, to the Capitol in Washington, D.C. A new era in long-distance communications had begun. Within a few years local companies were busily stringing the “talking wire” between many cities and towns. In 1861 the Pacific Telegraph …