Browse Items (27 total)
Sort by:
An Imaginary River: The Legend of the Rio Buenaventura
For almost a hundred years, explorers and mapmakers recorded a river that ran west from Utah out to the Pacific Ocean, despite no such waterway ever even existing.
From the 1770s to the 1840s, a majority of explorers, politicians, and white settlers…
Padrone System Stifled Freedom
A lot of Americans still dream of the American West as a place of freedom and opportunity. But for workers at the turn of the twentieth century, it was never quite that simple.As author Mark Twain brings Huckleberry Finn’s story to a close, we read…
Verla Gean Miller: Traveler, Teacher, Persian Princess
Verla Gean Miller FarmanFarmaian – beloved teacher to many Utah school children – made one decision to travel that set her on a fantastic journey that changed her life. In 1945, Verla Gean Miller made a decision to travel to the eastern…
Joseph Hansen: Right-Hand Man of Leon Trotsky
The 1940 assassination in Mexico City of Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky has an odd Utah connection in Joseph Hansen, whose journey took him from a childhood in Richfield, Utah, to the deathbed of one of the most important leaders of the 20th…
Defying Expectations: Elizabeth Randall Cumming's Journey to Utah
Elizabeth Randall Cumming came to Salt Lake in 1858 as the wife of Utah’s first non-Mormon Territorial Governor. Her expectations of the journey were defied every step of the way. Believing the Mormons were in rebellion in the late 1850s, the…
"This is the Right Place": Mormon Migration to Utah
The belief that there was no future for the LDS Church in the East motivated the Mormon exodus West, to the far side of the Rocky Mountains. But how did the Mormons know where they were going?
The Mormon migration that began in 1847 has…
Welsh Immigrants Recreate Their Lives in Utah
Welsh immigrants brought with them valuable skills that laid the foundation for Utah’s early mining industry. Like other countries in Europe during the 19th Century, Wales felt the effects of the Industrial Revolution. Rapid increases in…
Modern Refugees to Utah
How would you feel if you were a refugee and had to flee your home and move to another country? Meet two Utahns who did just that. Utah has long been a destination for immigrants motivated by the search for a better life. In the late 20th…
"One Vast Contiguity of Waste": Ute Relocation to the Uinta Basin
Learn about the forced relocation of Ute people from lush central Utah to the remote Uinta Basin. In the mid-19th Century federal Indian policy shifted from Indian Removal toward the reservation system. The result for many Native groups,…
Working on the Railroad: Utah's Chinese Pioneers
Chinese immigrant laborers built the railroad from California to Utah. On May 10, 1869 the Union Pacific and Central Pacific Railroads joined at Utah’s Promontory Point, completing the first transcontinental railroad system in the United…
Prehistoric "Snowbirds": Fremont Indians' Life on the Move
Birds do it… So do humans. In fact, humans in Utah have been heading south for winter for more than 1500 years. Along the lower Bear River, where it stretches into the Great Salt Lake, are the remains of five prehistoric campsites. …
Utopian Dreams: Russian Pioneers in Park Valley
A group of Russian pioneers sought a place to build their religious colony far from cities and government interference. Where else would they come but Utah? “Invest Dimes and Reap Dollars in Park Valley, Utah!” That was the promise of the…
Christina McNeil Walked to Utah
How one young Scottish woman journeyed 4,536 miles to Utah as part of “the most remarkable travel experiment in the history of Western America.”
Christina McNeil was born in Glasgow, Scotland in 1831 into hard economic times. She began…
Alien Registration Act of 1940
The United States has a long history of limiting immigration and managing migrants once they are here, including a campaign to register non-citizen immigrants living in Utah. Imagine you're a non-citizen living in Utah. When you open up your…
Chipeta: She Didn't Want to Come to Utah
Ute leader Chipeta – her search for peace meant the loss of her home and her way of life. Chipeta was the wife of Uncompahgre Ute leader Ouray and acted for years as a peacemaker between her people and the United States government. She stood…
The Journey of Gobo Fango
Gobo Fango, an enslaved boy from southern Africa, journeyed to Utah in 1861. Born about 1855 near the Cape of Good Hope in what is now the Republic of South Africa, Gobo Fango was shaped by hardship. While still a small child, Gobo Fango’s…
Porters & Waiters Club: Worth the Trip to Ogden
Americans love their entertainment. But how far would you travel for a bit of fun? Here’s why a music club on Ogden’s 25th Street became a place worth traveling to. The rousing nightlife of cafes and clubs of the mid-twentieth century conjures…
Martha Sharouk’s Journey to America
The journey of Martha Sharouk – a young wife who left Lebanon and travelled to Utah to begin a new life – did not quite go as planned… In the winter of 1913, a young Lebanese woman stepped off the train at the Denver and Rio Grande station in…
Edwin Bryant's Mule Ride
Nine men riding mules journeyed across the Great Salt Lake Desert in a single scorching August day. On August 3, 1846, Edwin Bryant woke up at 1:30 a.m. The silence around him seemed ominous. Camped this night on the Cedar Mountains at the…
Jewish Pioneers of Clarion
On September 10, 1911, twelve Jewish families arrived in Gunnison, Utah, to establish a Jewish agricultural community. The group was part of the “Back to Soil” movement, which believed Jews needed to leave the city and live on farms. The…