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Prohibition Inspires Business Innovation in Ogden
Learn how Ogden’s families and business-owners used the prohibition against alcohol to invent new styles of work… and how law enforcement worked to stop them.July 31, 1917 marked the last night before Prohibition in Utah, a new law that banned…
Sweet Story of the Startup Candy Company
Confections are a multibillion-dollar industry in the United States and Utahns currently buy candy at the highest rate in the nation – almost double the US average. It’s been that way for at least a century.Utahns have long had a sweet tooth. In…
Leonard Swett: Government Work on the Frontier
Starting in the 1840s, government explorers began to survey and map the Intermountain West more thoroughly. Meet Leonard Swett, a wealthy young man from Chicago who came West with the U.S. Geological Survey.Among the first government workers in Utah…
Folk Artists Work to Preserve Cultural Traditions
It might be easy to think that the production of folk art isn’t really “work.” But whether or not folk artists make a living through their creativity, their labors require hard-earned mastery of skills. Learn about two Utah women whose art was…
Telephone Transforms the Uinta Basin
You call, you text, you surf the net. You spend countless hours on your phone. Learn how the telephone transformed Utah’s remote Uinta Basin.When the telephone reached Utah’s remote Uinta Basin at the turn of the twentieth century, it completely…
The Mining Workscape
The depth, the dark, and the dangers inherent in coal mining created a uniquely hazardous work environment for miners in Utah at the turn of the twentieth century.Imagine for a moment that you’re walking the mountain trails of Carbon County in the…
Legacy of the Wagner Bag Company
Learn how one family went literally from “bags to riches” and how a son honored his mother’s legacy by naming after her one of Salt Lake’s most noted buildings.When Izzi Wagner lost his father, he was just sixteen. Life was hard for his…
Utah Tithing Houses
Much has been made of the early Mormons’ communal work ethic and the effective redistribution of resources within their communities. But how did they actually organize these efforts?Life on the eastern edge of the Great Basin was not easy. When…
Utah’s Military Industrial Complex
Hill Air Force Base is Utah’s sixth largest employer and military spending creates over $9 billion in economic activity for the State. Learn about the historic roots of Utah’s “Military Industrial Complex.”When US President Dwight Eisenhower…
Utah Midwife Hannah Sorensen
Learn about Utah’s nineteenth century midwives, who were unusual in that they were actually paid for their work as medical providers. Much of the work that sustained Utah’s communities in the late nineteenth century was done by women, in the…
The Guano Gatherers of Gunnison Island
Wings flashing in the sunlight, raucous calls filling the air, and tons of bird excrement coating the rocks. Learn about guano gathering out on the Great Salt Lake.Making a living collecting bird droppings does not exactly sound like the ideal job. …
Pablo O’Higgins: Mexican Muralist
The Mexican Mural Renaissance is one of the most famous art movements in modern history. Learn how a blond-haired, blued-eyed, 20-year-old from Salt Lake City became a Mexican Muralist. In 1924, Utah judge Edward Higgins put his twenty-year-old…
Toll of Unemployment: the Suicide of Mary Cook
The nationwide depression of the 1890s produced unprecedented levels of unemployment. One unfortunate casualty of the resulting stress and anxiety was Mary Cook, a young mother from Utah County. In 1894, a young mother from Pleasant Grove named…
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…
A Voice for Working Women
The Woman’s Exponent magazine served an unusual role in advocating for Utah’s working women during the late nineteenth century. One of the greatest advocates for Utah’s working women was the Woman’s Exponent magazine, started in Salt Lake…
Convict Labor: Road-Building Backbone for Utah
Learn about Utah’s convict labor system and how prisoners actually formed the backbone of some of our early public works projects – especially road construction.The term "convict labor" usually conjures up images of men wearing black and white…
Rebel Girl: Elizabeth Gurley Flynn
In 1914, the state of Utah put labor activist Joe Hill on trial for murder in a case that remains controversial to this day. Learn about Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, the woman who fought hard for Hill’s pardon.When the state of Utah sentenced labor…
In Praise of Leisure
Tourists and Utahns alike enjoy the Beehive State for its many opportunities for outdoor recreation. Learn how much of that recreation originated in the way people worked.The state of Utah is widely known for its outdoor recreation. Skiers…
Rafael Lopez: Fugitive & Folk Hero
Rafael Lopez came to Utah to help break a strike up in Bingham Canyon in 1912. A year later, he was a fugitive – and a folk hero.When Greek miners went out on strike in 1912, the Utah Copper Company turned to Mexican labor to keep production…
From the Earth into Bellies: Timpanogos Utes
We no longer work as close to the land as Utah’s indigenous people once did. But that doesn’t mean we don’t work for the same reasons. Learn how Timpanogos Utes made a living and how we might relate.We sometimes forget how much work was – and…