Victory over Japan Day, the day that the Japanese government announced its surrender to the US, Utahns celebrated in the streets. Celebrations were complicated by uncertainty and fear from the Topaz Relocation Camp near Delta.
Naturalist John Muir found himself in Salt Lake City in the late 1800s. Muir was attracted by the dazzling landscape of the Great Salt Lake and Oquirrh Mountains, and wrote effusively about Utah's scenery.
Persistent tales about a lost Spanish colony piqued the interest of Jose Rafael Serracino. Like many explorers before him, he was inspired to put together a search party and leave Santa Fe to explore the West.
The federal termination and restoration of the lands of the Paiute Indian Tribe illustrate the complicated relationship between state, federal, and tribal claims to land.
A mysterious traveler, T.H. Jefferson published a map of the California Trail in 1849. The map contained valuable information about the waterless stretch of desert west of the Great Salt Lake.
After Elizabeth Wood Kane arrived in Utah with her husband, her letters home became the manuscript for a book about Utah culture. Her writings shed some important light on the frontier and Mormon social customs.
Mormon women wrote and published a newspaper for and about Mormon women. The paper had a small circulation and was replaced with the Relief Society Magazine shortly after the newspaper declined.
An explosion reverberated through the sleeping town of Park City in 1894. Residents woke up to the discovery that someone had planted dynamite under the front stairs of a local house.
For four years Julius Taylor operated his black newspaper, The Broad Ax, for African Americans living in Utah. Taylor was not only a racial minority in Utah, he was also non-religious and a democrat.
As the Utah War settled to an occupation of the Utah Territory, Kirk Anderson, with financial backing from John Hartnett, started Utah's second newspaper the Valley Tan, targeting Camp Floyd's population of soldiers as well as the Gentiles settling in the Deseret.
The creation of the Spanish Speaking Organization for Community, Integrity, and Opportunity in Salt Lake City sought to identify problems of the Spanish-speaking minority. This group worked on behalf of the community to improve equality and access to opportunity in Utah.
