Utah Stories from the Beehive Archive

Browse Items (454 total)

2024-06-17 Rural to Rockets.jpg
So, you are a giant aerospace company and you want to build a rocket plant: what do you look for?  This week, learn how one Utah town met all the requirements to become a center for the US rocket industry and how that decision forever changed its…

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One of the most important artists of the 20th Century took a convoluted journey to create one of the most significant works of land art in the world. And it happened right here in Utah.     Robert Smithson was one of the pioneers of the land art…

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Motels dotted Utah’s highways throughout the twentieth century, beckoning motorists to pull off the road and spend their tourist dollars in rural towns. Now that hotel chains dominate accommodation options, what happened to these locally owned…

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Southern Utah’s unreliable Virgin River prevented settlers from achieving their dream of taming the land to grow cotton. Believing they could “make the desert blossom as the rose,” Mormon settlers expanded into southwestern  Utah in the 1850s…

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Reva Beck Bosone’s political ambitions began as a lawyer in Carbon County and eventually led her to become Utah’s first congresswoman.In 1948, Reva Beck Bosone became the first woman elected to Congress from Utah. Born in American Fork to…

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Many Utahns look forward to – or worry about – a comfortable retirement. But having the financial security to leave paid work after a long career is a concept that is relatively modern.When Effie Merrill’s husband died in 1915, there were few…

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You have probably walked over a buried creek many times and not realized it. Underneath the streets of Salt Lake Valley are seven creeks flowing from the Wasatch Mountains. What are the costs of hiding this water? In 1852, land surveyor and explorer…

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A reflection on the life and long political career of Calvin Rampton, Utah's longest serving governor. Rampton was born in Bountiful, attended Davis High School, and then graduated from the University of Utah with bachelors and law degrees. Soon he…

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The valley floor and cliffs of Clear Creek Canyon were sculpted over millions of years and evidence hints that humans moved along its waters as early as 8,000 years ago. You may have driven through this canyon yourself, but do you know the importance…

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The colonization of northern Utah’s Cache Valley escalated tensions that led to the horrific 1863 massacre of Shoshone people at their winter camp on Bear River. Learn how the Shoshone have returned to the river and are reclaiming it as a healing…

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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…

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Have you ever looked out over Great Salt Lake and thought, “I’d really like to grow oysters there?” You probably haven’t. Learn how Utahns have tried — and failed — to cultivate this unlikely product. The Mountain West is not known for…

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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…

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Today, we have 24 hour news channels and TikTok to share breaking news and current trends. But for Utahns isolated by distance in the early 20th century, the radio did a tremendous job of connecting residents in rural communities to each other and to…

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The creation of Carbon County in 1894 resulted from a rift between Mormon agriculturalists and non-Mormon miners, and illustrates the struggle over identity in rural Utah. The discovery of industrial-grade coal in 1882 at Castle Gate in Price Canyon…

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Famous photographer Dorthea Lange captured the heartbreaking struggles and resiliency of rural Utah during the Great Depression. Find out more about Lange and her extraordinary photographs.During the Great Depression of the early 1930s, Utah…

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Learn about the Provo Woolen Mills, the first large factory built in Utah.Prior to the coming of the transcontinental railroad in 1869, Utah's economy revolved mainly around agriculture, barter, and small-scale manufacturing. With the railroad,…

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Anyone who lives near Utah’s mountains knows how dangerous winter avalanches can be. Today, avalanches are closely monitored and relatively controlled. But it wasn’t always so. Learn about the 1897 avalanche in Provo Canyon that ended in…

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The anti-war movement came to Salt Lake City in 1969, culminating in a rally that the Salt Lake Tribune called “the largest peace demonstration in Utah history.”In October 1969, at the height of the Vietnam War, more than 4,000 Utahns took to the…

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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…
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