Spring City and the Politics of Preservation

Living in a historic home can be lovely -- but for Spring City residents in the 1970s, the influx of so-called "outsiders" sprucing up pioneer-era historic dwellings was a source of contention.

During the 1970s, Spring City residents used federal preservation funds to transform their town into a model for heritage tourism. Located in the heart of Sanpete County, Spring City's architecture is mostly original to the 1849 Latter-day Saint settlement of the area. Nineteenth-century homes and religious structures such as the Bishop's Tithing House serve as classic examples of Mormon frontier architecture with Danish folk influences. Many of these historic buildings were converted into family homes or art studios in the 1970s. For some residents, however, the transition of this rural community into a heritage tourism site was not straightforward.

Louisa Bennion grew up in Spring City as it was redefining itself as an artist colony and historic preservation mecca. Bennion's parents restored an historic home there, motivated by the loss they felt witnessing changes to their original home of Orem, where subdivisions replaced orchards in the post-war period. At the time, Spring City's population was so low it was actually declared a ghost town. Then, its elevation to a National Historic District led to an influx of so-called "outsiders" driven to restore and save the town, but which also dramatically changed the culture of the community. Locals whose families had lived there for generations faced tension with the newcomers -- called "incomes" and "weekenders"-- who saw any alteration to historic homes for new amenities as essentially "cutting off their nose to spite their face." In this tense atmosphere, Bennion reflected simply, "When I was a little girl growing up in an old house in Spring City, I knew of only two kinds of politics: the politics of water and the politics of historic preservation."

Today, Spring City is famous for having the whole town on the National Register of Historic Places. One local non-profit even hosts a yearly festival touring visitors to see the impressive restoration of the town's dwellings through open-home tours. In Utah, road trippers often seek out communities established in the nineteenth century that maintain picturesque and lively mainstreets. For such towns, this visitation is economically and culturally important. But there are politics to preserving these old buildings and tensions around old versus new are ever-present for many rural Utahns -- even today.