Intermountain Indian School hosted children from The Navajo Tribes, with 212 students in its first year before opening to host students from a variety of tribes in the 1970s. It operated until 1984, finally closing due to the high costs of operation, as well as the dwindling number of Native American boarding schools in the country. Native American off-reservation boarding schools started in the 1800s, with the main purpose of forced assimilation and removal of native culture. Children enrolled in such schools suffered much cruelty such as forbidding native language and culture, being forced to shave their heads, and experiencing abuse and mistreatment in the name of “civilizing” them. In the 1950s the government enacted its termination policy, trying to “end the native problem” by limiting funding to reservations to force natives into cities, and thus boarding schools followed the same ideals. Boarding schools began to focus on preparing Native children to participate in jobs in their new cities, without governmental support. This new policy was in effect during the creation of the Intermountain and thus existed to fit the new policy changes of the termination policy.  The concept of Native American boarding schools in general is proof of the intense violations and pressure put upon the native communities by the US government to in attempts erase their culture, and history. While Intermountain did not restrict cultural expression through clothing or activities, Intermountain was not an exception to other infringements on civil rights. In 1971, a spokesperson from the  American Indian Movement (AIM) an organization created to fight for native civil rights, listed the following concerns; horrible food, unfair grading process, overcrowded and dirty living conditions, forcing students to choose a Christian religion, few native teachers, and Harsh unfair punishments. Another concern with the school was that their education set them up exclusively for jobs lacking upward mobility or chance of improvement, leaving a disparity in job opportunities for Native peoples. As the school continued to run it became increasingly aware and supportive of the needs of the native people, and took steps to rectify some of its social problems, such as making efforts to include more native teachers, and support cultural representation.  The history of the Intermountain is complicated, with mixed reviews from its graduated students. Where some of its students still feeling deeply connected to the school and their time there, others remain deeply traumatized from their experience and have nothing positive to say. In its 34 years of operation, the school was rife with controversy, from both inside and outside the school, and ultimately its history is still complicated and important to the story of the previous students and native communities it interacted with. 

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The original Box Elder County Courthouse was constructed in 1857 and was used as a school, church, theater, and government office. It was the largest hall in town and had a gallery built into the west end with a choir loft under the gallery. School was taught in the downstairs east room of the building as late as 1880. Each Sunday, the entire community gathered to meet in the large upstairs room of the building for church services. After the town's division into wards, or ecclesastical boundaries, the Fourth Ward continued to hold church services in the courthouse until 1880.  Brigham City was incorporated in 1867 and quarterly meetings with the mayor and city council first took place in the building. By 1894, bi-monthly sessions were held. In the 1870s, there was a large bell hung on the roof which signaled work time, lunch time, and quitting time with the Brigham City Co-operative enterprises. In 1887, the building was remodeled and a clock tower was added.  In 1910, the building was greatly expanded. Local architects Funk and Wells oversaw the design of the large front addition in Neoclassical style. The clock tower was redone, with the original building now in the back. The new county courthouse was one of the most prominent buildings in the city and was visible from the Depot.  Few changes have been made to the building since 1920. A new clock was purchased for the clock tower in 1950, and in 1960 a small addition was constructed on the northeast part of the building. The interior of the building has been remodeled several times, though much of the 1910 section remains intact. The floor plan of that section has not been altered substantially, and most of the original woodwork remains. The recorder's offices, clerk's offices, district courtroom and judicial chambers have all remained in their same locations since the 1910 addition to the building. In 1988, the building was added to the National Register of Historic Places. Today, as the oldest county courthouse in the state, the Box Elder County Courthouse remains a vital government building.

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In January 1950, Intermountain Indian Boarding School in Brigham City, Utah was established. In its first year, the school welcomed around 500 Navajo students. Twenty-four years later, in 1974, Intermountain opened its doors to students from nations outside of the Navajo and remained inter-tribal until it closed in 1984. In comparison with other Indian boarding schools in the United States and Canada, the Intermountain Indian Boarding School has a fairly tame reputation; however, many public controversies and struggles throughout the school’s history leave its legacy complex and unresolved.   Yearbooks from Intermountain paint student experiences in a positive, culturally enriching light. Pages are rife with statements such as “at Intermountain, students retain their proud heritage and also find delight in new events - blending both elements into a rich and an unforgettable year.” Interviews with students ring with similar sentiments such as: “I really enjoyed the situation because it brought me away from a home where we had to haul water and no running water and all that stuff and everything was furnished.”   Nevertheless, even though the student body projected love for their school, some instances in the school’s history indicate an alternative view. In early 1972, a student from Intermountain committed suicide while being held in Brigham City Jail. This was the second suicide of an Intermountain student, the first of which occurred four years previous in November 1968. Regarding the second suicide, Intermountain officials released a statement stating that they had “nothing to hide.” Additionally, between these two suicides, in April 1971, a group of students filed a lawsuit against the school and its administrators on the grounds of segregation, discrimination, and the use of tranquilizers, among other things. Ultimately the court ruled in favor of the school.  When discussions of the school's closing began, students made public demonstrations against imminent closure by running on foot for over 20 miles. Without success, Intermountain Indian Boarding school closed in 1984, to the devastation of some. The legacy of the school remains complicated as its history combines tragedy and opposition in the midst of tolerance and benevolence. 

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Business courses have been offered at Brigham Young University since its infancy. BYU’s business college, called by many different names in its long history, was previously housed in Maeser Building and the Jesse Knight Building.

As the number of business students at BYU increased, in 1980, private donors funded the construction of a new, larger building that the school of management could call home-- making the structure the first on campus funded entirely by private donations. This new 144,000 square foot building was named after President N. Eldon Tanner, a prominent leader in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. President Tanner, had been a teacher, politician, businessman, and apostle. “Known in and out of the Church as Mr. Integrity,” President Tanner possessed high morals and prodigious management skills. Sadly, President Tanner did not live to see his namesake building finished. He died in November 1982, just months before the April 5, 1983 dedication.

In 1988, BYU’s “School of Management” was renamed the “Marriott School of Management,” after J. Willard Marriott, the founder of the famous hospitality company “Marriott International.” J. Willard and his wife Alice S. Marriott made a large donation to the school. The name of the school was adjusted again in 2017, when the university announced that the BYU Marriott School of Management was being changed to the “BYU Marriott School of Business.”

In April 2007 work began on an addition to the Tanner Building. The large, four-story addition, dedicated by President Thomas S. Monson on October 24th, 2008, housed new classrooms, study spaces, offices, a large lecture hall, a parking garage, and a deli. Between 1983 and 2008 the Marriott School saw a 50% increase in student enrollment. This addition added 53% more space for the growing school. Since becoming accredited in the 1950’s, BYU’s business school has developed some of the top undergraduate business programs in the country. The Tanner Building, with its sleek modern lines and extensive facilities, is a fitting home for the world renowned Marriott School of Business.

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The famous Andrew Carnegie, native of Scotland, started the Carnegie Corporation. It's goal was to give endowments to cities across the United States and the world to build and maintain a library in their city. The Corporation was giving money to any city that requested funding with proof that their citizens were willing to pay for the library's upkeep.   The idea of requesting a grant to build a library from the Carnegie Corporation first occurred to the people of Brigham City in 1912, when the size and age of the library that was being used was brought into question. City officials met to discuss the possibility of having a Carnegie library and the benefits it would bring to the area. Having up to date literature, materials, and a gathering place for the citizens of Brigham City were all motivators for wirting to the Carnegie Corporation. Initially the city wanted an endowment for $20,000 to build the library, but the Carnegie Corporation made an offer of $10,000.  In 1914, after two years of correspondence between the city and the corporation, a grant of $12,500 was settled. Over the course of the next few months, the plans were drawn up and the architectural firm, Shreeve & Madsen of Ogden, was chosen. Construction began in the spring of 1915.  The Carnegie Library was finished on December 15th, 1915. The building was constructed in the Prairie Style, which was common in the state. Key features of Prairie style include a one-story building with a raised basement, horizontal emphasis, and geometric elements in the decoration of the building. Since its construction, only one major addition was built in 1977 and was constructed to match the look of the original building.  Special attention was given to maintaining the visual independence of the original building from the addition by using glass to join the old and new sections. Additionally, the brickwork was layed in order to emphasize the horizontal lines of the building. In 1984, the Carnegie Library of Brigham City was added to the National Register of Historic Places.

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Brigham Young, President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, selected the site for the Box Elder State Tabernacle in 1865. However, construction did not begin until 1876 under the direction of Brigham City’s first Stake President, Lorenzo Snow. The building was not finished until 1890 under the leadership of Stake President Charles Kelley. The architect was probably Truman 0. Angel, Jr. or his father, one of the more famous L.D.S. Church architects. With volunteer labor, field stone was collected nearby and lumber was hauled from the mountains, sawed and delivered to the site. The structure was 50 feet by 95 feet with a tower rising above each of the four corners. The seating capacity was 1200.

One Sunday afternoon in 1896, the building burned down, leaving only the four walls standing. According to the local paper, the Brigham City Bugler, it took only a half hour for the tabernacle to turn into “a mass of furious, crackling flames.” By 2:30 in the afternoon, the building was nothing more than a smoking, blackened hulk. The fire had even stripped the plaster from the walls and floating embers from the tabernacle blaze had touched off other fires around town.

It was rebuilt under the leadership of Stake President Rudger Clawson in a more elaborate neo-Gothic style. Sixteen brick buttresses were added to the exterior with steeples topping each one. A major tower was added to the front. Inside the building a vestibule was added and the seating capacity increased by 400. The new structure was dedicated in March of 1897. A reporter for the Brigham City Bugler wrote, “What on the day of the great fire appeared a calamity, will tomorrow be looked upon as a great blessing -- there is really no comparison between the old and the new.”

As the L.D.S. Church built more stake centers in the Brigham City area, the tabernacle became less prominent. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1971. Although some talked of tearing it down, the building was restored and renovated from 1985 to 1987. To this day many come to tour and praise this celebrated building with its long history of trials and triumphs.

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The Oregon Short Line Company was established in 1878 to provide the Union Pacific with access to the Pacific Northwest. In 1906, that company built the Brigham City Train Depot. A.C. Rainey and his staff of 22 laborers constructed a “Hudson Bay Gothic” style building. It had all of the modern amenities including plumbing, electricity, steam heat, and lavatories. The Depot was later purchased by the Union Pacific Railroad.

The Depot was important in Brigham City’s early economic success. Countless cars of locally grown fruit and produce were shipped from that location. In fact, so much fruit was shipped that the Knudson Brothers located their fruit packing and storage business close by and built a spur track. A cannery was also located on the west side of the tracks so that canned fruit could be easily loaded onto the train cars. Large quantities of fish and mail were also shipped from the Depot. Residents of Brigham City remember being able to take their mail straight to the Depot in order to get it out faster.

During WWII, the Depot had 14 employees and as many as 17 passenger trains daily. Countless soldiers passed through the Depot on their way to various assignments or the Bushnell Military Hospital located nearby. Tons of military and medical supplies were brought in. However, by the 1950s, passenger service declined, and eventually came to a standstill. Amtrak operated daily from 1971-1977; then the Depot fell into disuse. Some in Brigham City thought the abandoned building an eyesore and urged demolition. However, on July 16, 1992, the building was listed on the National Register of Historic Buildings, and in February of 1994, it was deeded to the Golden Spike Association.

Today the Depot serves as a museum of railroad and historical artifacts and has multiple original pieces. It also serves as an education hub for nearby school children and patrons. The Depot is the gateway to Brigham City from the West, and is popular among local photographers, history fans, and train buffs. It retains much of its original grandeur, including the large sweeping multiple hip roof, the wide overhanging eaves with wooden brackets, and even benches that passengers sat on while waiting for trains. Over 500,000 man hours have been donated by volunteers to restore this unique building to its original beauty.

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Following WWII, the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) converted the Bushnell Army Hospital—a multi-million dollar military facility—into a federally operated Indian Boarding School. Nestled up against the Wasatch Mountains in Brigham City, Utah, the Intermountain Indian School (IIS) became home to an annual 2,150 students, ages six to twenty-two, 600 of which spoke no English upon arrival. The IIS quickly became the largest of the remaining nineteen off-reservation boarding schools operated by the BIA in both size and number of students.

As with past models, the IIS emphasized English and other academic and vocational skills and prescribed the age-old practice of assimilating Indians into mainstream America—a type of education for extinction. In 1951, IIS superintendent George Boyce, in hopes of permanently removing Navajo children from their Indigenous cultures and communities, proudly announced that the IIS would approach assimilation of “these backward groups” through “a more informed attack” in order to Americanize the Navajo children that attended the school.

In the fall of 1974, they renamed the school the Intermountain Inter-Tribal School, choosing to enroll students from twenty-six other tribes from across the nation. Because of tribal animosities, riots erupted in February 1975, during which three police officers were injured and several police cars destroyed. Further, operating under conflict of constitutional and federal treaty requirements, the IIS was charged with numerous civil-rights lawsuits that described a number of personal abuses and violations of human rights. On May 17, 1984, the Intermountain Indian School closed its doors, ending over a century of federally-instituted American Indian boarding school programs.

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World War II took the lives of approximately 3% of the entire world’s population in the 1940s—so it’s no surprise that life-saving efforts became a top priority at the time. Military hospitals were built throughout the war front as well as the home front. Brigham City, UT became home to one: Bushnell General Military Hospital. The hospital impacted Brigham City in various ways, including the lives of many individuals who served and were served there.

Many employees at the facility were locals, which boosted Brigham City’s economy. They needed the skills that varying individuals possessed because Bushnell was innovative in their patient care. Just one of many examples is their developing a new type of prosthetic limb that used plastic instead of metal, which soon spread to other amputation centers and became more commonplace in the medical field.

They were also innovative in their treatment procedures. Bushnell had a significantly low death rate, which is accredited in part to their experimental use of penicillin. Penicillin was new to the medical world and proved effective for many patients, allowing doctors at Bushnell to save many more lives and limbs than they would have been permitted under other circumstances.

Once soldiers were healed, the focus shifted to rehabilitation. They had band performances by amputees, visits from celebrities such as Helen Keller to boost morale, and a general sense of community involvement to aid in all steps of this process.

The hospital also provided facilities for mental health treatment. The psychiatrists were well-trained and used the best and newest treatments they had at the time. However, many patients had already suffered from mental and emotional illness before the war, and seeing combat brought them to severe extremes. The psychological knowledge of the time was not sufficient to help many of them, and they ended up in hospitals for extended periods of time. However, due to many experimental treatments, they made advancements in psychiatric treatment that continued to be implemented afterward.

After the war, the hospital was closed in 1946. The buildings were remodeled and turned into the Intermountain Indian School: a boarding school for Native American children. It was successful for several years but was closed in 1984 and the land was given back to the city. The buildings have mostly been demolished now, but Brigham City has experienced the long-lasting effects of the hospital’s influence. Bushnell brought the community together in a way nothing else could—it was a chance for a small town to band together for a good cause in a troubling time.

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In a world that had begun to globalize and where many resources were traded internationally, World War II wreaked havoc on market stability. Materials such as steel, rubber, nylon, and silk were suddenly made scarce across the United States in the early 1940s. Utah was no exception to the rapid decline of available materials, and the Minute Women were organized to aid in the salvage effort. Over the course of the War, they would help in educating Utah citizens about which materials were needed, collecting those materials, and distributing them to specific locations. They would provide support for the war effort without ever having to travel overseas.

The Minute Women were part of the Volunteer Salvage Corps, a division under the federal War Production Board. When first recruiting women, letters were sent from Washington, D.C. making it sound like a competition, asking, “Which state could organize first with a woman on every block?” Each Minute Woman would be in charge of educating her neighbors about new salvage initiatives. Her responsibilities were numerous, but passing along communication and supporting American troops through salvage was her primary purpose. The chairmen of the Salvage Division in Utah sent letters to potential members, saying that if they were unable to serve, they should pass the baton to someone else on their block. The Utah Minute Women’s Organization was serious about meeting the expectations of the federal government, and worked hard over the next few years to meet the harsh demands of the war.

The Minute Women, as well as women in the United States in general, were creative in their efforts to support the war. One of the first materials requiring rationing was silk (and later nylon) because military parachutes were made out of them. When they couldn’t purchase silk or nylon stockings, some women would paint their legs to make them look like they were wearing nylons. They would even take an eyebrow pencil and draw a “seam” on the back to make the effect more convincing. Another sought-after resource was fat and oil, which many would save from their kitchens (leftovers from cooking). In Utah, hunting has always been a common pastime, and they also set up stations where hunters could leave deer and elk fats. They collected tin cans at grocery stores and schools, coordinated paper drives, and recruited dry cleaners to clean donated clothing. They aided in countless other war programs, such as bond drives, surveys, footwear exchanges, bottle collections, and volunteer recruitment.

The Minute Women also worked closely with the Bushnell Military Hospital in Brigham City, UT. They collected and donated needed materials, and on one occasion, donated trees for beautifying the area. The hospital no longer stands, but at the time it employed and serviced thousands of Americans.

Utah’s Minute Women never saw combat, but they fought and gave everything they had for what they believed to be a noble cause. Their efforts supported a national effort that was pivotal in the US military’s success in World War II.

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Wilhelm and Laura Knudsen immigrated to America in the 1850’s. Wilhelm was born in Copenhagen, Denmark and he joined the LDS Church in 1851 at the age of seventeen. In 1852 he traveled to America and crossed the plains with the Eli B. Kelsey Company, arriving in Salt Lake City on October 16, 1852. He and eight other people in the company were the first Scandinavian Saints to immigrate to the Utah Territory. This was the beginning of a great wave of Scandinavian saints in which “Denmark supplied more immigrants to Utah in the nineteenth century than any other country except Great Britain”. Laura Amelia Nielsdatter Christensen was born in Rabjerg, Hjorring, Denmark. She immigrated to America in 1853 and crossed the plains with the John E. Forsgren Company, arriving in Salt Lake City on September 30, 1853. They were married in Salt Lake City on March 20, 1854, and moved to the old fort in the Box Elder settlement. Wilhelm became a farmer and traded his fruit and produce with workers in the railroad town of Corinne. Laura helped the family’s finances as a skilled seamstress. In 1855 the settlement was named Brigham City and Wilhelm and Laura had this log cabin built to move their family into. Six of their thirteen children were born in this cabin.

Wilhelm and Laura contracted with Charles Porter Squires to build this family cabin in 1855. Squires was born in Newbury, Ohio on March 22, 1827. He joined the LDS Church as a teenager and would eventually travel west in the Brigham Young Company of 1848. His older sister Charlotte was married to Lorenzo Snow. Sadly, Charlotte died on September 25, 1850. She was survived by her baby girl, Roxy Armantha, who was less than one year old. After her death Charles and Lorenzo remained lifelong friends. In a letter dated December 21, 1856, Lorenzo told Charles that “language fails to express the feelings and sincere gratitude of my heart for the interest you have manifested in the many kind and important services you have discharged in my interest since you came in my family…I have decreed in my heart that some day I shall pay you fourfold and with interest”. Charles would follow Lorenzo Snow to Brigham City when Lorenzo was called to lead the community. Charles married Sarah Peters on September 1, 1856. Charles was a skilled carpenter and was active in the Brigham City community.

The Daughters of Utah Pioneers played a major role in the preservation of the cabin. It has been moved twice with the first move occurring on April 16, 1929, when it was relocated to Rees Pioneer Park. Later the Knudsen cabin was moved to Brigham Young Park. During this move the cabin required extensive preservation repair. The Daughters of Utah Pioneers raised funds to complete this work and the cabin was dedicated on June 1, 2001.

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