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Radio: Bridging the Distance Across Rural Utah
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…
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…
Raising Hopes and Oysters in Great Salt Lake
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…
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…
Reclaiming Boa Ogoi
![Darren at Boa Ogoi by Levi Simm Oct 2020[11].jpg](https://stories.utahhumanities.org/stories/files/square_thumbnails/d82d6ef51a196ab41282cfdb5d6f3ce8.jpg "Darren at Boa Ogoi by Levi Simm Oct 2020[11].jpg")
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…
Red Reed Water: Clear Creek as Native Waterway
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…
Remembering Calvin Rampton
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…
Resurrecting Salt Lake City’s Buried Water
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…
Retirement? Effie Ensign Merrill Never Left the Workforce
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…
Reva Beck Bosone
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…
River vs. Colonization: The Mormon Cotton Mission
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…
Roadside Motels
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…
Robert Smithson's Journey to Spiral Jetty
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…
Rural to Rockets: Box Elder County Takes Off
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…
Rural Utah at a Crossroads
Every rural person and place has a story. Change is part of that story. While many Utahns identify with rural landscapes, work, and culture, the very idea of "rural" is changing today.
Utah is an urban place with a rural heart. The vast majority of…
Sacred Healing: Traveling Midwives in Early Rural Utah
Frontier life in late-nineteenth century Utah was rough. Today, many rural Utahns still struggle with access to medical care, but once upon a time midwives traveled throughout rural Utah, providing healthcare services to those in isolated areas.
In…
Sagebrush Rebellion in Grand County
When local officials in southern Utah's Grand County declared independence from the federal Bureau of Land Management in 1980, they took rhetoric of small government and individual freedom to a whole new level.
On July 4th, 1980 hundreds gathered…
Salt Lake City’s Red Light District
Salt Lake City’s Red Light District was the target of an unusual cleanup campaign in 1908.Prostitution is known as "the world’s oldest profession," and was established in Utah by the 1850s. While laws made prostitution illegal, Salt Lake City…
Salt Lake Newsboys Unionize
“Extra! Extra! Read All About It!” was a common cry from boys and girls peddling newspapers on city corners all across America. Learn about the newsboys who filled the streets of Salt Lake City.Child labor played a big role in Utah’s turn of…
Salt Lake Valley Hot Springs
An area now occupied by an oil refinery, a gravel mine, and a freeway, was once Salt Lake’s premier tourist attraction.
Everyone smells it. A whiff of sulfur, as your car rounds the corner on I-15 between Salt Lake and Davis Counties.…