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YESCO Lights up the Streets
Main streets throughout postwar Utah depended on conspicuous signage to entice passersby to stop and shop. Learn how one Utah company used eye-catching neon to meet that demand.Walk down any main street in Utah and you might notice relics of a recent…
Butch Cassidy: Outlaw for the People?
As Americans, we extol the value of an “honest living,” but what about work that is less than honest? Butch Cassidy was a Utah boy with a penchant for wild living who paid his way using any means necessary.While considered unsavory, many…
Susanna Bransford: The Silver Queen
Meet prominent socialite and millionaire Susanna Bransford, who built her fortune on the back of Utah’s mining boom.Susanna Bransford – Park City’s infamous “Silver Queen” – epitomizes Utah’s glamorous Gilded Age. But Bransford…
Powerful Madams Presided Over Utah’s Brothels
It may come as a surprise to learn that in late 19th century Utah – an era with great constraints on women’s work – that prostitution offered at least some women a path to a powerful career.In the late 1800s, railroads and urban growth spurred…
AnnaBelle Weakley: Businesswoman & Community Builder
Meet AnnaBelle Weakley – known as the “Queen of 25th Street” – and learn how her entrepreneurial instinct and civic spirit transformed her Ogden community.During the mid-twentieth century, there was no railroad hub in Utah busier than Ogden,…
It's a Bird! It's a Plane!
Airplanes played a pivotal role in attracting tourism to one southern Utah town. On September 27, 1920 the first airplane cast its shadow over Cedar City, Utah. Who was flying it? And why were they flying there? In the early 1920s,…
Labor Rationing in Utah’s Depression Economy
Meet Barney Flanagan and learn how it fell to him to keep corruption out of government-funded work-relief jobs in Utah during the early years of the Great Depression.When you hear about shortages during the Great Depression, you probably imagine…
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…
Love Your Work: River Rat Georgie White
Do you love your work? Georgie White did. Her free spirit and appetite for Western landscapes and ferocious rivers led to a long, passionate career.What’s YOUR passion? Veteran adventurer Georgie White turned her passion into a career by…
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…
Frank Chester Robertson: Dreamweaver
Meet Frank Chester Robertson, the famous Utah author who made his living writing popular Westerns that belied his own life of desperation on the Mormon frontier.Frank Robertson wasn’t exactly the kind of writer groomed in literary circles. Born…
Ancient Farmers & Prehistoric Waterways
People living in Utah have been managing water to support agriculture for over a thousand years. Using tools and techniques perfected by their ancestors, these ancient farmers manipulated water and adapted to their dry environment in order to…
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…
Utah Rejects the White Elephant
The United States federal government controls about 65% of land in Utah. The goal of maintaining these lands for public use tends to polarize Utahns. But there was a time when Utah leaders were not averse to federal regulation of public lands.…
Mystery in the Marshes
The Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge protects an important -- but incredibly vulnerable -- part of northern Utah’s ecosystem. This is no accident. Learn how a mysterious illness and community activism led to its creation.
Humans and birds alike…
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…
Women Hold the Line in Carbon County
When Carbon County coal miners from the National Miners Union went on strike in 1933, their wives, sisters, and daughters were right there beside them. These women proved to be formidable adversaries in the fight for workers’ rights.
Women have…
AIDS in Utah: The Unspoken Epidemic’s Hidden Heroes
Whether it’s cancer or autoimmune, it’s common today to see people wearing folded ribbons in solidarity against a disease. But did you know AIDS was the first disease ever to have such a ribbon?
In the 1980s and 90s, AIDS was the country's…
Sorority of River Rats: Gender Norms on the River
If you’ve ever been on a river trip, you probably didn’t bring along your hair curlers or a nightgown. But for women rafters in the 1930s, keeping up gender norms was part of the river experience.
Between 1936 and 1949, Norm Nevills operated a…
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…