Before daybreak on June 26, 1866, a party of Timpanogos and Utes—led by Mountain, a Colorado Ute chief—seized around fifty animals, a mix of cattle and horses, from Mapleton, Utah. It was in the middle of Black Hawk’s War, and the Native American party hoped they had achieved a meaningful victory. After driving the animals through a canyon to Little Diamond Creek and feeling they had made a clean getaway, the Native American group took a break in a clear, open field near the convergence of the Little Diamond and Diamond Fork rivers to graze their horses. However, while the horses were grazing, militiamen roused from Springville surprised the indigenous group and cut off their escape route. Knowing they had no other way to escape, the Timpanogos retaliated, and the militiamen took cover in a grove of trees and fired on the Timpanogos. Both sides fired on each other to little avail for a few hours, and Mountain taunted the militiamen, calling out Albert Dimmick specifically as a “coward and a squaw.” Dimmick furiously stood up, out of his cover, and a Native American immediately got a hit on him. Injured, Dimmick died a few hours later. Reinforcements from Spanish Fork came to support the Springville militiamen, further pinning the Timpanogos raiders in the brush. Both the Native Americans and the militiamen tried to spread out and surround the other, but only the settlers succeeded. Pinned between two groups of enemies, the Native Americans stopped fighting—until a leader, most likely Mountain, raised a crest above them and urged them to fight on. At his appearance, the militiamen fired until he slumped in his horse and rode away. As their leader retreated, so did the rest of the Timpanogos and Utes, heading up the steep sides of the canyon and abandoning the captured animals to save their lives. Later, the militiamen found out from Native American contacts that they had killed five or six Utes in the battle. A second militiaman, this one from Spanish Fork, a hotheaded youth of eighteen years, Jonathan Edmiston, had also been killed when he rushed into the middle of the Timpanogos to try to reach the Springville militia’s captain. His fellow soldiers had lost track of him in the brush, and after the raiding party retreated with their wounded and dead, they searched unsuccessfully for his body. The following day, a search party returned to the battleground and found Edmiston’s scalped corpse. This exchange is demonstrative of the scattered battles of the Black Hawk War in Utah.

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Before there was a ski resort, homes, and a fire station at the head of Big Cottonwood Canyon, there was a tract of wild land open for use. William Stuart Brighton established Brighton Camp, and then Brighton Village. William Brighton, his wife Catherine, their two children Janet and Mary, and his sister Annie, came to America from Scotland in 1855, and traveled west in 1857. They experienced a difficult journey, burying Mary at sea and little Janet walking barefoot across the plains. The Brighton family created a famous center for recreation and leisure when they built Brighton Hotel. Their contributions made a significant difference in Salt Lake society, with visitors flocking to the mountains for good food, dancing, and beautiful scenery.

William Brighton stood with his colleague, Joseph Elder, at the top of Big Cottonwood Canyon in 1870 and drew lots to see who would claim mining rights in Little or Big Cottonwood Canyons. Brighton drew Big Cottonwood Canyon. He brought his family, which had grown to include sons Robert Alexander, William Henry, Thomas Bow, and Daniel H., to the area, at first living in a tent, but by 1872 had built a one-room cabin. A mining boom in the Alta area brought many miners through their land, going between Park City and Alta, and the Brightons began to host them. The miners liked Catherine’s cooking, and eventually persuaded the couple to build Brighton Hotel in 1874 to more formally host their many visitors. The Brighton Hotel quickly became a popular summer destination, hosting some of the most prominent Salt Lake people. The area was a romantic escape from the hustle and bustle of the city below, and was described as having excellent fishing and beautiful wildflowers, and its scenery inspired many. The family often hosted bonfires and dances for the whole canyon, where they enjoyed listening to the fiddle and the accordion. Popular lakes around the hotel were named by the Brightons and other residents of the canyon; for example, it is said that the German artist Bornimann named Lake Catherine after Catherine Brighton, who renamed Dog Lake to Silver Lake, due to the way that it shimmered in the early morning.

By 1895, the Brightons had opened a small store, a post office, and second hotel. They also had the only telephone in whole canyon. The canyon swelled with summer visitors, drawn to the beauty of the mountains and the hospitality of the Brightons. Sadly, in 1894, Catherine died of a heart attack, with William passing away nine months later, in 1895, of blood poisoning from an infected sliver in his finger. The Brightons’ contribution to the canyon as a place of recreation and inspiration is unequaled and is of sure sentimental value to the history of Big Cottonwood Canyon.

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In the mid-nineteenth century, Mormon leaders became concerned when the youth in their church began attending missionary schools sponsored by other Christian denominations. They wanted their youth to obtain quality educations, but to do so from faithful LDS teachers. On October 16, 1875, Brigham Young moved forward with his educational goals for the Church by purchasing the Timpanogos branch of the University of Deseret in order to found Brigham Young Academy. Young declared that this school would teach secular and religious knowledge.

January 3, 1876 marks the first day of classes at Brigham Young Academy, with a meager 29 students registered. Karl G. Maeser served as the first permanent principal of BYA from 1876-1892. He used his talent in education and faith in God to transform the school. When he arrived at BYA, he remarked, “There were no records, not much system, and certainly no regularity." He found the "premises inadequate, the facilities limited, students few in number and poorly prepared, and financial conditions exceedingly discouraging." Fortunately, Maeser was ready for the challenge. He trained teachers, taught classes, and enforced a strict list of rules for behavior. Under his leadership, BYA flourished scholastically.

In January of 1892, Benjamin Cluff was made BYA’s new principal. BYA’s financial situation was at an all-time low, but Cluff worked diligently through continual fundraisers to keep the school afloat. However, despite his best efforts, Cluff knew that the only way to truly save the school was to have the Academy incorporated by the Church. Despite the Church being in its own precarious financial situation, it had invested too much into BYA to see it disappear, and they agreed to take on financial responsibility for the school. Because of Principal Cluff, BYA was saved. In 1903 BYA was changed to Brigham Young University, and to this day pursues the stated goal of providing education that is spiritually strengthening, intellectually enlarging, character building, and that leads to lifelong learning and service.

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Brigham Young, with hopes of encouraging self-sufficiency within the church, called Mormon pioneers to settle southern Utah, a desolate desert. Though they established a growing community, and soon joined together to build an LDS Temple. The building of the temple served to unite the fledgling community. The temple construction was no easy feat, as the ground for the site chosen by Brigham Young was marshy; thus the Saints had to pack lava rock tightly by pounding it with a lead-filled cannon in order to build a safe enough foundation. Members volunteered one out of 10 days to work; women made drapery and clothing for the men; families donated time, labor, china dishes, and sometimes, even hair (as the stories go). The framing of such an incredible building was a massive undertaking in design and was only possible as members and non-members alike worked together to create a place to worship the Lord.

The first design of the temple steeple was, as Brigham Young described it, “short” and “squatty” However, the temple was almost completed so they chose to keep it. A year later on an October afternoon, after Brigham Young’s death, a huge lightning storm overtook St. George, and lightning caught the steeple on fire. The rain put the fire out, but the steeple was destroyed while the rest of the roof and walls were left perfectly intact. Needless to say, when they rebuilt it they built the steeple taller, possibly hoping to appease Brigham Young. The construction of the whole temple took about 7 years, and it facilitated building of more housing for the influx of workers; economically improved the community through work at sawmills, wood camps, and stone quarries; and equalized the financial situation of everyone. George A. Smith said, “We were united in everything we did in those days. We had no rich, nor poor.”

Brigham Young said about the LDS members in southern Utah, “I will say that we have had a blessed time, such a time as no other people on the earth have enjoyed for many centuries, that we have any knowledge of.” The building of the St. George temple, the trials, the joys, and the sacrifice created a unified foundation on which the rest of St. George’s growth was built upon.

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The barren deserts of North America have always been viewed with fascination due to the lack of natural resources. Early human survival in this region was extremely hard, and the mid-20th century excavation of Danger Cave greatly expanded understanding of regional history. Danger cave is an archaeological site located in the Bonneville Basin of western Utah, north of Wendover and west of the Bonneville Salt Flats. Danger Cave State Park Heritage Area became a National Historic Landmark in 1961 and a state park in 1968. This cave is one of the most significant archaeological sites in North America because it reshaped the way that we think about Utah’s Native peoples.

Danger Cave was formed about 13,000 years ago under the waves of Lake Bonneville. When the water levels of the lake lowered, people began living in the cave. Native Americans are thought to have begun living inside of this cave about 11,000 years ago, right after the end of the Ice Age. It had been inhabited by different native people consistently after that, so archaeologists discovered layers and layers of artifacts in this cave. These native people left behind fascinating evidence of their existence inside of Danger Cave.

Despite the challenging working conditions in the cave, which included dust and heat, the cave was excavated throughout the 1940s and 1950s by anthropology students attending the University of Utah. Jesse Jennings was a faculty member at the University who led the exaction project that has reshaped the way we think of the early people of the Great Basin. The large amount of artifacts found makes it one of the most important sites in North American history and gives us a better idea of how early Native Americans survived in the barren desert of western Utah.

The extremely dry climate in the cave made it a perfect place to store artifacts and human remains for over 11,000 years. Inside of the cave textiles, baskets, pottery, animal bones, plant remains, weapons, chipped stones, and leather scraps were all found. Radio-carbon dating proved this site to be one of the oldest known Native American sites in North America.

The artifacts and data collected from Danger Cave taught us about the previously unknown ancient cultures of the western deserts. Findings in the cave suggest that these people lived in relatively small groups of 15-30 individuals, that consist mostly of extended families. The search for food was what dictated their lives, and these groups moved around constantly searching and they had little time for leisure activities. They had no building projects and no complicated rituals. The main focus of their lives were to survive and to have enough food.

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On July 21st, 1847, after a grueling journey of 108 days, Erastus Snow and Orson Pratt had the distinction of being the first Mormon pioneers to descend from Emigration Canyon into the Salt Lake Valley, after following the remnants of a rough road through the Wasatch Mountains most recently blazed by the Donner-Reed Party. Pratt’s words capture the grandeur of that moment, “After issuing from the mountains . . . and beholding, in a moment, such an extensive scenery open before us, we could not refrain from a shout of joy . . . the grand and lovely scenery was in our view”. Although the Mormons were not the first Euro-Americans, or even emigrants, to pass through Emigration Canyon into the Salt Lake Valley, their arrival represented a dynamic transition in the history of Utah, which the Mormons would dominate from that point onward.

The day after Snow and Pratt first glimpsed and scouted the valley, the Mormon pioneers already began to reshape both the route through Emigration Canyon and the valley itself. On July 22nd, a crew from the advance wagon party lead by Stephen Markham cut a road through Donner Hill in just four hours, creating quick and suitable route around the hill that taxed the Donner-Reed Party’s animals the previous year. On the same day, led by Orson Pratt, eight members of the advance party made their way down into the Salt Lake Valley to locate a suitable location for planting. Finding the soil to be more fertile closer to the mouth of Emigration Canyon, the party discovered an area near City Creek, a “beautiful creek of pure water” according to Pratt, that would become the first settling point for the Mormon pioneers. On July 23rd, while the advance company began plowing acres of land and damming City Creek, Brigham Young, ill with “mountain fever”, made the journey over Little and Big Mountains and camped near what Orson Pratt called Last Creek, prepared to take the final 6 miles of the journey the following day.

On July 24th, now celebrated as Pioneer Day, the ailing Brigham Young descended into the Salt Lake Valley in one of Wilford Woodruff’s wagons, entering sometime after noon, and as recorded in Woodruff’s journal, “expressed his full satisfaction in the Appearance of the valley as A resting place for the Saints.” Brigham Young triumphantly entered the City Creek camp at 2 PM, finding 5 acres of potatoes planted, which the Saints irrigated at noon from the creek, thus beginning the great work of molding the Salt Lake Valley into a suitable home for the Mormons. Although the infamous words of Brigham Young, “this is the place” were not recorded until 33 years later by Wilford Woodruff in a speech commemorating the Mormon church’s 50th anniversary, “This is the Place” monument, completed in 1947 by Brigham Young’s grandson Mahonri Young, immortalized the Mormons’ arrival into the Salt Lake Valley on those July days in 1847, which would transform the land and history of Utah forever.

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Japanese internment reached its long fingers deep into the interior states of the U.S. not sparing the state of Utah. Utah's contribution to this program came in the form of Topaz. Located 15 miles from Delta, Utah, Topaz was created by the War Relocation Agency to house up to 9,000 evacuees. It would, at its peak, reach a total population 8,232 individuals, and, over the course of its life, Topaz would serve as the home for 11,212 individuals. These first groups of individuals came mostly from the Tanforan race track that had been converted temporarily into an internment camp. They were moved into the camp beginning on September 11, 1942. The camp was constructed in blocks with 34 blocks being devoted to residencies and 8 being administrative, including a hospital built on the site . Overall, Topaz appeared as a well-developed city with schools, libraries, churches, and other features of a normal community .

The lack of normalcy in this community was encapsulated by a single event in 1943. An older gentleman, James Wakasa, was killed while allegedly trying to escape from the camp by crawling under the barbed wire fence. The local newspaper reported the initial story, that Wakasa had been attempting this escape and was warned four times by the guard before he was fatally shot . However, a later report by the military showed that he had in fact been standing near the fence when he was shot. Further investigation revealed that many of the military personnel assigned to guard the camp were combat veterans and this particular guard had seen time in the Pacific, perhaps compromising his objective judgment. The death of Wakasa brought to the forefront the inherent tensions that existed within the camp between the Japanese American evacuees and the Caucasian administration. Despite efforts made within the leadership of the camp to eliminate this form of distrust, the fact that the war was still going on and Caucasian Americans were distrustful of most Japanese Americans, citizens or not, was one that could not be passed over lightly.

In a cruel irony of wartime circumstances, Utah became a place not for refugees as it had been for Mormon Pioneers in the nineteenth century, but one for prisoners of war within their own country.

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The need for expansion into Castle Valley came from Utah’s population rise in the late 19th century. Every inch of habitable land needed to be used to ease the rapidly increasing population. Brigham Young called settlers in Sanpete County to move to Castle Valley.  This area was explored as early as 1776 when Domingues and Escalante traveled into Utah; they passed through modern day Castle Dale, ten miles north of Ferron on the Old Spanish Trail. Today I-70 follows parts of the Old Spanish Trail that cuts through the San Rafael Swell. As Edward Geary has written, “Few places on earth could have looked less promising for settlement than Castle Valley in 1877.” Three years after Brigham Young’s letter to the residents of Sanpete Valley, Ferron’s population had grown to 90 in 1880. On coming to the Castle Valley, Mary Ann Rowbury Brown said, “We endured willingly many hardships and cheerfully made sacrifices in order to carry on what we sincerely believed to be God’s works in subduing a desert and advancing civilization.” The state and federal governments created incentives to help cultivate land across the nation and encourage westward expansion. In 1862, the Homestead Act gave settlers 160 acres for a small registration fee if they developed the land and improved it. In 1878, the amended Timber Culture Act also gave a way to get more land if one would plant 10 acres of trees on their given acreage. The Timber Culture Act was the way one Ferron settler, John Lemon, obtained his land. Homesteading and farming was the norm in the beginnings of Ferron. Lowry Nelson, an early resident of Ferron, said, “Precipitation was so scant that plant life was limited, except along the creek bottoms.”  In the late 1870’s mining began to boom in Emery County and Carbon County. This boom created jobs for people in the area, not just in the coal mines, but created a market that was not there before for farming, creating a demand for produce. Coal mining also boosted the erection of the Hunter and Huntington Power Plants in the 1970s and 1980s. Aside from farming, livestock was a fruitful business. The unique geography of Castle Valley made raising livestock a minimal expense. In the summers one could free range cattle, horses, or sheep up in the mountains and in the winter bring them down from the mountain and leave them on the desert range. Fruit farming in Ferron also began early. The growing season was tough in Emery County for fruit trees, but Ferron’s southern exposure, and deep, well-drained soil made it the best place to grow fruit in Castle Valley.” The tradition of raising livestock and planting peach orchards has continued today and is a big part of the culture in the area today. Each summer Ferron holds The Southeastern Utah Junior Livestock Show and has an annual Peach Days celebration held at the beginning of September during prime peach season.

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Dinosaur National Monument consists of over 210 acres of mostly uninhabited land owned by the federal government, 91% of which is managed as Recommended Wilderness. Dinosaur National Monument is unlike the other National Parks Service land in Utah. It is home to almost 26 full dinosaur skeletons from over 10 different species. These fossils were discovered in 1909 by Professor Earl Douglass from Carnegie Museum, who was responsible for excavating the fossils in the quarry. Given that these fossils are 150 million years old, the area was declared a National Monument in 1915 in order to protect the fossils and keep the quarry intact. In 1938, the land of the national monument was expanded to protect the canyons of the Green and Yampa rivers. The National Monument land is not only home to these dinosaurs, but it was home to prehistoric people and archaeological sites as well.

Fremont Indians inhabited the area for hundreds of years (approximately 200-1300 AD). They have left their mark on the territory, similar to the dinosaurs. There is an abundance of petroglyphs and pictographs within the monument boundaries. Many of these ancient drawings are of animals and other things the Fremont Indians would have interacted with. It is unclear as to why exactly these people left their mark in this way, but they have stood the test of time to show us of their existence in eastern Utah. Other tribes have also inhabited the area since this time, including the Ute and Shoshone tribes. Prior to 20th excavation, the area was also traversed by the Domínguez-Escalante Expedition in 1776.

In the early 1950s the Bureau of Reclamation proposed the building of a dam on Echo Park, which is located on the Green River in the National Monument. Many conservationists fought against this proposal because land owned by the National Park Service was not allocated for development. Fortunately for the National Monument, the Council of Conservationists were able to shut down the proposal after six years and dozens of publications. Dams were then built in Glen Canyon and Flaming Gorge to avoid being on any National Park Service land, particularly Dinosaur National Monument. Today the National Monument stands as a reminder of extinct prehistoric creatures, ancient civilizations, and environmental conservation.

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In 1893, historian Frederick Jackson Turner famously claimed the year 1890, three years prior, marked the closing of the American Frontier. It seemed in the 1890s that America’s expansionist spirit was shifting from the continental Wild West to locations abroad such as Cuba and the Philippines, pivoting away from consolidating a land empire and toward questing for a sea empire. Pioneers in Fruita, Utah, however, were still preoccupied in the 1890s with frontier processes. Although they had secured their isolated, red rock land, even in 1890 their community lacked important infrastructure such as education, a postal service, and a building for worship. As they settled in and secured the land, the pioneers were able to gather sufficient time and organization to put together more of a society, beginning with an education system. Nettie Behunin, a young girl 12 years of age, became one of the first teachers.  Nettie might not have been a truly qualified teacher by twenty-first-century standards—or perhaps even by her own—but her endeavors marked the beginning of the first community project in the area: the schoolhouse. In a collection of childhood memories of Fruita, Clay M. Robinson reflects on his experience as a young boy in the newly built Fruita schoolhouse as his mother was the teacher at the school during his childhood. He writes, “Most vivid of all in those memories, are Mama and the little one-room sawed-log Fruita school where she taught all eight grades in the years 1925–1927.” He also mentioned that the schoolhouse was used for Sunday church services and Sunday School—most of Fruita were members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or Mormons—because there was no dedicated chapel in Fruita. Since residents could rearrange the in the schoolhouse, the small building served as a community center that could host different events like dances, box socials, knitting group meetings, and gatherings for men and young boys who enjoyed baseball. The Fruita schoolhouse evidently served as a center of the community, where the small number of settlers could gather to enjoy each other’s company. The Fruita schoolhouse still stands today. Tourists can easily see it as they drive through the park since it is located just to the side of the highway. At times the Park Service offers tours in the old schoolhouse that allow small children to briefly roleplay pioneer school life. This schoolhouse represents the first community building of the Fruita settlement, as well as a reminder of what life was like for the small community of Latter-day Saint settlers.

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Somewhat overshadowed by the more well-known Danger Cave, Hogup Cave provides some of the same enigmas presented by Danger Cave, such as the struggle for life in the harsh environment. Excavated by Dr. C. Melvin Aikens of the University of Utah in 1967 and 1968, the archeological evidence recovered from the cave—dating back as far as 6,000 BCE—shows a desert culture in line with Native peoples of the time. Starch granules found on artifacts show the use of small scale gathering, and a prevalence of projectile points show the importance of hunting, with bighorn sheep and pronghorns acting as the prey. Both findings suggest a nomadic people who used the cave periodically while hunting on the surrounding land. The cave came to be used cross-culturally, as is seen in the evidence for the replacement (rather than assimilation) of Fremont peoples by Numic speaking groups. Fremont artifacts do not continue past Unit III (400–1350 CE), and Numic artifacts start to appear in Unit IV (1350–1850 CE). Because the history of the cave extends back to 6000 BCE, it was an important find for understanding the ancient desert cultures put forth by Jesse Jennings in his excavation of Danger Cave, an archaeological dig site about 65 miles away from Hogup Cave. Hogup Cave provides more evidence supporting Jennings’s challenge to Ernest Antevs’ theory of widespread drought during the time of its occupation, showing how discoveries such as the one at Hogup also inspire questions relating to cultural ecology, asking to what extent environment impacts these cultures. Not much information is available about the caves aside from the excavation done by the University of Utah and the writeups done by project supervisor C. Melvin Aikens. Such writings make up the bulk of the scholarly work, and artifacts from the excavation can be found at the university’s Museum of Natural History. But the discovery of the cave itself remains somewhat a mystery. Local folklore and oral histories point to Orval Evans discovering the cave in the 1930s, while the University of Utah eventually learned about Hogup Cave by hearing about subsequent expeditions. This story reflects the accidentalism and amateur archeological enthusiasm that sometimes surrounds archeological discovery in Utah.

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“Gathering” was an important concept in early Mormon theology. Converts to the church were encouraged to make their way to Utah so they could gather with the saints and participate in ordinances that were only available in the temples in Utah. Though missionaries had first arrived in Hawai'i in 1850, Hawaiian converts were barred by strict emigration laws from emigrating to America until the 1880s. Once Hawaii relaxed their emigration laws, Hawaiian converts began to migrate to Salt Lake City. However, because of a lack of employment opportunities for the Hawaiians, cultural differences, and a growing fear in Salt Lake City of leprosy being brought over from Hawaii, it soon became apparent that the Hawaiians would need a separate settlement. In 1889 the church bought the ranch of John T. Rich in Tooele County’s Skull Valley to use as the site for the Hawaiian settlement. On August 28, fifty-two Hawaiians arrived at their new home in Skull Valley. The settlement was named Iosepa after Joseph F. Smith, a member of the church’s first presidency who had been a missionary in Hawaii.

To get around the provision in the Edmunds-Tucker Act that prohibited the Church from owning property valued over $50,000, Iosepa operated as a joint-stock company known as the Iosepa Agricultural and Stock Company, with several white Mormon men as shareholders. Hawaiian settlers began raising livestock and planting crops such as corn and wheat in Iosepa. While living in Iosepa, the residents faced the trials that naturally accompanied settling and farming in the Great Basin such as unexpected weather, crop failure, illness, and having enough water for their crops and daily needs. Despite these difficulties, the Hawaiian settlers managed to create a little Hawai'i in the Utah desert. They raised carp and grew algae as a substitute for seaweed in a nearby reservoir. They used corn husks as a replacement for Hawaiian ti leaves to wrap pork. They spoke Hawaiian and sang Hawaiian hymns in their church meetings. Each year they celebrated their own Pioneer Day on the anniversary of the settlement’s founding with a traditional Hawaiian feast. The Hawaiian converts also helped build the Salt Lake temple and consistently made the journey to Salt Lake City to attend the temple once it was dedicated. While the Tooele desert could not be more different from the tropical island environment of Hawaii, the settlers of Iosepa found ways to adapt to their new surroundings and participate in the religion that was so important to them.

In 1915 the church announced their plans to build a temple in Hawai'i. Joseph F. Smith encouraged the Hawaiian saints in Utah to return to Hawai'i to help with the temple and promised that the church would help pay the settlers’ traveling expenses. This essentially dissolved the community at Iosepa as almost all the settlers between 1915 and 1917 sold their property and possessions back to the Iosepa Agricultural and Stock Company and returned to the island. Though Iosepa only lasted a little over twenty-five years, it stands out in Utah’s history as being the first place in the state to be settled by non-European emigrants. Iosepa continues to be an important place for Pacific Islanders today, who gather in Iosepa each Memorial Day to commemorate Utah’s first Polynesian community.

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The Isaac Chase Mill is the oldest commercial building still standing in Utah. The mill was built beginning in 1847 when the second group of Latter-day Saints arrived in the Salt Lake Valley and was finished in 1852. The mill was made by Isaac Chase who had been a successful miller in his home state of New York as well as in Nauvoo after he had been baptized into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Isaac took the trek west in 1847 with his family, including his 13-year-old daughter who drove the wagon that had the gristmill equipment. It was with this equipment that he was able to create his mill which became one of the first in Utah. In 1854, after two years of the mill’s operation, Brigham Young joined Isaac Chase and became his partner in the mill’s production. Chase continued as a miller for the next six years before selling his share of the mill to Brigham Young in exchange for a cabin in Centerville, Utah in 1859. The mill then became known to most as Brigham Young’s lower mill as he already owned a mill further north in Salt Lake City.

The mill became well known due to the famine of 1856-1857. During the famine, Isaac Chase’s mill provided free flour to the people of the valley, helping them survive and saving numerous families. Before Brigham Young’s death, he said he wished the land on which the mill stood to be sold to the city for the lowest possible price. On April 20, 1881 Salt Lake City purchased 100 acres of land from the Brigham Young estate which included the Chase Mill. Today the mill stands as a historic monument at Liberty Park, which was once known as Mill Farm in honor of the Isaac Chase Mill.

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The young, second-generation Japanese immigrants (Nisei) relocated to the Topaz Mountain Internment Camp during World War II faced a unique challenge. Born in American to the children of Japanese immigrants, they were forced to negotiate between being legal citizens and being seen as outsiders. After Pearl Harbor in 1942, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 creating the Military Exclusion Zones along the Pacific Coast. The order pushed 120,000 Japanese out of their homes and into internment camps, including Topaz. The intention was to protect America against any immigrants whose allegiance was still with Japan. The youth were directly confronted with the issue in the form of the Loyalty Exam. Two of the questions read, “Are you willing to serve in the armed forces of the United States on combat duty, wherever ordered?” and, “Will you swear unqualified allegiance to the United States of America . . . and foreswear any form of allegiance to the Japanese emperor, to any other foreign government, power, or organization?” These questions were the basis of the “Yes-Yes” and “No-No” groups that caused division among their age group and all within the camp.

The forced relocation led Japanese young people like Miné Okubo and Yoshiko Uchida to turn to art, journals, and letters to compile the effects the movement had on Japanese family structure and their own dreams of education or social advancement. These forms of communication expressed a worry for their people, confusing and hurt over being sent to internment camps, and the desire to still support the America they had been born into. This extended into subsequent post-war Sansei generations as well. R. A. Sasaki, a third-generation San Franciscan, captured this desire in her short story American Fish. The main character, Mrs. Hayashi, is asked by an old acquaintance, Mrs. Nakamoto, why Mrs. Hayashi’s parents stayed in the United States after Pearl Harbor. Mrs. Hayashi answered simply, “I guess they knew that we, I mean my brothers and sisters and I would never want to go to Japan. I mean we were born here. We belonged here. And they wanted the family to stay together.”

Despite their circumstances, Japanese-American youth held on to the hope of an America that offered opportunity. They created from scratch, along with teachers and administrators, a successful school with limited resources. In fact, many of the students complained in interviews later in life about the lack of credible teachers and resources. The draw to a world they had grown up in, like Yoshiko Uchida who continually applied to go to college while in Topaz, highlighted the difficult situation these Japanese Americans were in. They believed in a nation who could give them everything, but were left to wonder why they were building their own prison walls when they were more than willing to fight for the nation that they were both “born” to and “belonged” in.

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The Lehi Pioneer Cemetery was the first settler cemetery in the Lehi area. When the citizens first started using this land as a cemetery in 1851, it was public land. Thomas R. Jones acquired the property through the Homestead Act of 1862, but quickly deeded it to the city for its continued use as a cemetery. Although most of the records for the cemetery prior to 1895 have been lost, evidence exists proving that a pioneer who died at the age of seventy-five was the first man to be buried in this land. It is also evident that along with the many early settlers that died of natural causes there were a few murder victims buried in the Lehi Pioneer Cemetery, such as the Lehi schoolteacher, George William Thurmond, who was killed by one of his students while trying to decorate a city Christmas tree on Christmas Eve.

In 1872, Lehi's population was growing and the city decided they needed to widen the State Road that the Lehi Pioneer Cemetery was located on and build a railroad through the middle of the cemetery. Subsequently, many bodies that were buried in the cemetery were dug up and reburied in a new cemetery. Many families who had family members buried in the cemetery had moved and were indifferent to the relocation, but a few families asked for the bodies to not be moved. In the process of building, most of the bodies in the area were removed but some were not found and remain there today, including John Griggs White.

Following the removal of the bodies from the cemetery and the addition of a railroad, the land was no longer recognized as a cemetery and people could buy the land for their own property. Den Turner bought some of the land and built a tire shop called “Den’s Tire Shop” during the 1950s. Bud Nielson also bought a portion of the land to build his home around the 1970s. Den Turner eventually sold his tire shop to Don Harris during the 1970s. All three men found skeletons of the pioneers on their land while doing construction. In response to the bodies that were found, the Daughters of Utah Pioneers decided to build a monument near Den’s Tire Shop on the centennial anniversary (1951) of the cemetery’s establishment. However, in the five years that followed it became evident that the monument needed to be moved because the customers of Den’s Tire Shop were repeatedly hitting the monument while entering and exiting the shop. The Daughters of Utah Pioneers pleaded with the city for the monument to be moved and in 1958, the city gave a small piece of land to the Daughters of Utah Pioneers a block east of the actual historical cemetery for the monument and small roadside park. Currently, one can visit the monument of this historical cemetery on this roadside park located from 190-200 West State Street, Lehi Utah.

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The community of Union Bench was an extension of Springville, but the growing community that would soon become Mapleton hit a turning point when they built their first dedicated public meetinghouse for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day-Saints. Settlement began in 1856 and the small church branch met in a public schoolhouse located near the center of town. The schoolhouse, even with an addition made to provide more space, did not last forever. The branch was officially organized into a ward in 1888. Around this time, a larger meetinghouse was needed for both the school and the church.

As a new school was finished in 1890 and the church meetings moved there the members of the Church recognized they needed a dedicated meetinghouse. A committee was formed to find a building site and local member Matilda Streeper offered to donate one acre of land if construction of the new church began immediately. Construction on the church began in 1889, the church was dedicated in 1892, and in 1893 it was completed and meetings started. The meetinghouse was a stepping-stone into Union Bench becoming a town. As the new school and church were completed, the community pulled together to petition for township. As the Mapleton ward, named after a grove of trees near the canyon, made up a majority of the community’s population, the town came to be known as Mapleton, Utah.

The meetinghouse stood and satisfied the needs of the ward for many years. The building was sturdy and any hazards to it were swiftly taken care of, but as Mapleton continued to grow after gaining town status the need for a bigger meetinghouse arose. In the 1930s, the Great Depression hit the town and the population struggled. The church and town leaders worked closely together to combat poverty and support the struggling families by finding different work projects to provide work receipts that could be exchanged for food. One of these projects was the demolition of the old meetinghouse and the construction of a new one, which is still standing. The new chapel cost $35,000, half of which was donated by the local community. The chapel was completed in 1938 and dedicated for use in 1941 and is still in use today. You can find a plaque with a brief history outside the chapel, as well as historical photos on the walls inside which convey some of the heritage of the early Mapleton residents.

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In the mid-1850s, the Mormons of Utah were not on friendly terms with the United States of America. Previous persecutions from the government caused Mormons to be distrustful of the United States. The United States saw the Mormon theocracy that existed in Utah and feared its disloyalty. This caused the Utah War, a cold war between the territorial and federal governments. Droughts and pestilence in the mid-1850s caused an extremist movement in Utah called the Mormon Reformation with powerful rhetoric, including a religious capital punishment. The atmosphere of Utah at the time was hostile.

The Baker-Fancher party of emigrant families was passing through the Southern end of Utah and rumors went with them. Local Mormons feared their intentions and assembled militia and local Paiutes to attack. In a series of attacks from September 7-11, 1857, 120 men, women, and children were killed, leaving only 17 small children alive. After much controversy over who was at fault for the massacre and the extensive efforts to cover up and understand, John D. Lee, one of the men who led the assault, was ultimately convicted and sentenced to death.

The first monument was built by James H. Carleton in 1859 when he was investigating the massacre for the United States. In shock of what he had seen, he felt the need to build a monument by stacking stones atop one another with a cross at the top. The monument was repeatedly destroyed and rebuilt over the years. Calls for a more honorable and permanent monument were made by the descendants of the Baker-Fancher party and Mormon President Gordon B. Hinckley. While the permanent monument was being built in August 1999, a backhoe dug up the bones of 28 massacre victims. Much controversy went behind whether to study them or to honor them through reburial in time for the dedication. Utah Governor Mike Lee made the decision to not spoil the commemoration of the dead with controversy. The decision was made to honor the dead and allow for the healing of old wounds.

Historian Levi Peterson likens learning about the massacre to a Greek tragedy. Tragedies tell a story of an honorable hero who falls under a gross misunderstanding. When we view another in the midst of a tragedy, we are capable of escaping our own tragic emotions and seek for healing through catharsis. As one views this monument, one may come seeking healing of their own mistakes.

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