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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…
Legalized Water Theft: The Daniels Diversion
If someone admits they’ve broken the law, the government is not supposed to take up their cause. Yet that is exactly what happened when a group of farmers in Heber Valley stole water from the Ute Reservation for decades.
Water in Utah is a precious…
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…
Law of the River: The 1922 Colorado Compact
Maybe you’ve heard it before: “The Nile is the longest river in the world. The Amazon is the largest. But the Colorado is one of the hardest working.” Learn why.
Did you know a quarter of Utah’s water comes from one river? That river is the…
Law of the River: Conflicts & Legacies
In 1922, Utah joined the Colorado River Compact as arid Western states started to scramble for equal access to the waters of the Colorado River. But taming nature with this legal agreement did not come... naturally.
In 1922, seven states in the…
Land and Murder in Beaver County
Land distribution turned deadly for one man in Beaver County. Newcomer John Howard was shot and killed as a result of mounting tensions over claims to land.Utah has at times been a violent place, especially when distribution of lands has been at…
Lagoon: From Promenades to Rollercoasters
Did you know that one of the oldest roller coasters in the world is right here in Utah? It all started with a pond and a dancehall called “Lagoon.” Learn more about one of Utah’s oldest amusement parks.In the late nineteenth century -- before…
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…
Kit Hansen
A newspaper article about a robbery reveals more than the story of a crime in Salt Lake City. It also tells us about the history of racism in Salt Lake City.A little more than a century ago, a man was robbed on the streets of Salt Lake City. Hardly…
Kingsbury's Purges
A series of rash faculty firings at the University of Utah in 1915 exposes the concern over the influence of “radicals” in the United States at the outbreak of World War I.The year was 1915, and a handful of popular professors were about to lose…
Kid Activists Honor the ‘Father of Television’
A group of school children fought in the Utah legislature to win recognition for one of the world’s most important inventors.Can you imagine the world without television? Its impact is everywhere, yet few people realize that the inventor of the…
Keetley Farms
Keetley Farm was an agricultural settlement for Japanese Americans during World War II.Many Utahns know the story of the internment camps built to imprison Japanese Americans during World War Two. Utah was even home to one such camp at Topaz in…
Keeping Cool: Ice Harvesting in Utah
Ever wonder how people kept food cold before electricity? Learn how ice was harvested, stored, and used throughout Utah before freezers were common household appliances.
During the nineteenth-century, frozen water was a rare and valuable commodity.…
Kanosh
Kanosh, a leader of the Pahvant Utes, used negotiation with white settlers to ensure the survival of his people.In 1856, Kanosh, an influential leader among central Utah’s Pahvant Utes, delivered a speech before Utah’s territorial legislature.…
Justice Sutherland
In 1922, English-born George Sutherland was nominated to serve on the US Supreme Court. To date, he is the only Utahn to ever hold the position.In 1862, George Sutherland, Utah’s only U. S. Supreme Court justice to date, was born in…
Julius Taylor and the Broad Ax
For four years Julius Taylor operated his black newspaper, The Broad Ax, for African Americans living in Utah. Taylor was not only a racial minority in Utah, he was also non-religious and a democrat.In the 1890s there were about six hundred African…
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…
John Wesley Powell's Hydraulic West
A map of the United States is a familiar sight in Utah’s classrooms. But if we had listened to one of America’s most visionary scientists more than one hundred years ago, Utah’s state borders would look totally different today. Maps shape how…
John Wesley Powell's First Run of the Colorado River
More than 140 years ago, on August 30, 1869, six men in two wooden boats emerged into open country from the high cliffs and rough waters of the Grand Canyon. They were “blackened, bearded, emaciated, in rags,” and down to their last stash of…
John Muir in Utah
Naturalist John Muir found himself in Salt Lake City in the late 1800s. Muir was attracted by the dazzling landscape of the Great Salt Lake and Oquirrh Mountains, and wrote effusively about Utah’s scenery.In 1877, naturalist and future Sierra Club…