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Blossom as the Rose: The Mormon Cultural Landscape
When members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints first arrived in Utah in 1847, they set about changing Utah’s arid environment with irrigation techniques and canals that affect our landscape today.
Cultural landscapes are a…
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…
The Meeker Incident: Allotment & Dispossession of Ute Land
A federal agent in Colorado tried to force a band of Utes to take up farming. This would come to impact not just Utes in Utah, but national Indian policy.The experience of the Ute people was a crucial factor in the development of national policies…
National Monuments to National Parks
Utah is home to five national parks that protect stunning red-rock landscapes. All but one of them began as a national monument. What's the difference, you may ask? Learn all about it.
Zion National Park is a world-famous destination, and its annual…
The Militarized West
World War II and the Cold War brought the military to much of rural Utah, transforming those places in the process. The economic boost that followed was long-lasting in some communities, but devastatingly short-lived in others.
While the federal…
The Jeffersonian Ideal: A Misfit for Utah
When the United States was was created in the late 1700s, Thomas Jefferson had a vision of a nation built by individual family farmers. Here in Utah – we love farmers. But did we really live up to Jefferson’s ideal?
For many in the United States'…
The Canyonlands Controversy
Canyonlands is more than just Utah’s third national park. Its designation in 1964 occurred after a fight over who exactly public lands are meant for.
In the late 1950s, the National Park Service began assessing lands for a new national park in the…
Moson Kahni: The Winter Camp at Boa Ogoi
Located along the Utah-Idaho border, the Bear River is the source of life for Northwestern Shoshone people. They know it as Boa Ogoi and for hundreds of years, winters spent along its edge offered respite and rejuvenation.
The Northwestern Band of…
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…
Grove Karl Gilbert and Utah’s Terminal Lakes
Here in arid Utah, our terminal lakes are so sensitive that even small-scale nineteenth-century agriculture produced measurable changes. Find out how early geologist Grove Karl Gilbert calculated this delicate balance.
Although short on rainfall,…
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…
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…
Town That Drowned: The Rockport Reservoir Tradeoff
If you could provide drinking water for thousands of people by displacing twenty-seven farming families, would you do it? Utah leaders faced this very dilemma in the 1950s. Find out what they decided.
How would you weigh the cost of progress? As…
Mink from Summit County to Hollywood
American mink are cousins to otters and ferrets, and their fur is exceptionally soft and dense. While times have changed, mink furs raised on rural Utah farms were once the height of luxury fashion.
Utah’s mink industry began in earnest in 1924,…
Water Right: Just Allocation of a Precious Resource
Who has a right to water? How you answer that question likely reflects your cultural concept of water ownership. It’s no surprise that ideas about how to fairly allocate this precious resource vary wildly – both today, and in the past.
It's…
Skinny Dipping in the "Pen Pond"
Like most Utah communities in the early 20th Century, Salt Lake City’s Sugar House neighborhood lacked a public swimming pool. What’s a kid to do on a scorching summer day? Well, use the pond on the grounds of the nearby Utah State Prison, of…
Fuller’s Hill: Salt Lake’s Premiere Urban Playground
Maybe you’ve heard of the Great Saltair Pleasure Resort as a prime example of Utah’s early pleasure resorts. But have you ever heard of Fuller’s Hill? At about 1100 East and 400 South in Salt Lake City, this little-known park had a covered…
Town that Drowned: Big Village at Willard
The historic settlements underneath Willard Bay were submerged twice - first by years of dirt, dust, and debris and then again by a flooded reservoir.Buried under the Willard Bay reservoir on the northeast end of Great Salt Lake is not one but two…
“You Protect the Water:” Uranium Mining & Utah’s Native Peoples
The uranium mining and milling industry in Utah has had a devastating effect on water that disproportionately affected the health and safety of Native American tribes.
During the height of the atomic age after World War II, southern Utah was teeming…
Utah’s Expensive Flooding Quick-Fix: The 1987 Bangerter Pumps
Out in Utah’s West Desert is a massive $60 million infrastructure project that hasn’t been used in over thirty years. Can you guess what it is and why it was made?
In the 1980’s, a flooding Great Salt Lake threatened transportation, industry,…