The Utah Capitol’s ornate rotunda includes twelve murals that the Public Works of Art Project funded during the New Deal era. The pieces fill the dome and the spaces between the rotunda’s arches. Painted along the dome’s base, four illustrations display scenes from Utah’s pioneer settlement history, including: Father Escalante Discovers Utah Lake – 1776, Peter Skene Ogden at Ogden River – 1828, Fremont First Sees Great Salt Lake – 1843, and Brigham Young and Pioneers Entering the Valley. Prominent architect Richard K.A. Kletting, known for creating several Utah buildings, completed the Capitol in 1915 after winning a competition. Inspired by Greek and Roman architecture, Kletting designed the Capitol in the Corinthian style, seen through features such as its distinct exterior columns. With its large scale, Utah marble, and commanding city view, the building’s construction cost a grand $2,739,529.

Lee Greene Richards led the mural project, while Henry Rasmussen, Ranch S. Kimball, and Gordon Cope assisted him, with Waldo Midgely creating the murals’ borders. Richards grew up in Salt Lake City in an artistic family. He studied under J.T. Harwood in Salt Lake City, and at Paris’s Académie Julian and École des Beaux-Arts. While visiting England on a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Richards developed a passion for portraiture, although he also became a popular muralist who captured Utah’s settler history in the rotunda murals. The Capitol rotunda’s murals opened in 1935 with ceremonies headed by former Utah Governor, Henry H. Blood.

The muralists conducted lengthy research to ensure that their chosen depictions were significant and accurately portrayed. While researching Peter Skene Ogden at Ogden River –1828, for example, Richards ensured that he depicted period-accurate weapons. In the murals including Brigham Young, however, Richards decided to artistically represent the Salt Lake City founder with his more recognizable beard, despite pioneer depictions from this period showing that Young was clean-shaven.

Father Escalante Discovers Salt Lake – 1776, depicts the Spanish expedition of Atanasio Domínguez and Silvestre Vélez de Escalante accompanied by a small group and one of three Ute people who guided them. Flanked by the area’s foliage, the background exhibits the scenic waters of the Great Salt Lake. In Peter Skene Ogden at Ogden River – 1828, Ogden and his company are in the vividly colored Ogden Valley using weapons like the Hawken rifle, the preferred weapon of choice along the western frontier. Fremont First Sees Great Salt Lake –1843, features John. C. Fremont and his party overlooking the lake’s expanse, positioned in an adventurous pose overlooking the scene. Brigham Young and Pioneers Entering the Valley, focuses on Brigham young and his distinctive beard standing proudly as he reaches the Salt Lake Valley, joined by pioneers, cattle, and covered wagons.

Examining these murals reveals the aims of the New Deal-era art projects in not only employing artists but also in creating a western American artistic identity. Indeed, the Public Works of Art Project-funded murals did not typically illustrate the Great Depression’s despair. Conversely, muralists like Richards chose to focus on themes of a settling, pioneering past. In choosing to depict scenes of Utah’s pioneer settlement, then, this optimistic vision guided Richards and his co-painters. 

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Andrew Standing Soldier, a Sioux artist of the Oglala Lakota Nation, completed the Arrival Celebration and The Round-Up when he was twenty-two, installing the murals in Blackfoot, Idaho’s Main Post Office. Gilbert Stanley Underwood constructed the Blackfoot MPO in 1936 in the Art Deco style, seen specifically through details such as the foliage motif that decorates the building’s exterior columns. When researchers placed the building onto the National Register of Historic Places in 1989, it was the sole federally-constructed post office in Idaho built in the Art Deco style. The building continues to operate as a post office today.

Andrew Standing Soldier was born in 1917 on South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Reservation. He was taught to draw by his father, Martin Standing Soldier. During the 1930s, he studied art under the Swedish muralist Olle Nordmark, a Pine Ridge artist-in-residence who was known for his mural work in New York. Nordmark went on to supervise Standing Soldier during the creation of the MPO murals. With his individualistic, western-focused style and well-drawn horses, Standing Soldier painted the post office murals through a government commission after he submitted sketches of his ideas.

Standing Soldier painted the five-panel Arrival Celebration and Round-Up with a realistic and Regionalist style under the Treasury Section of Fine Arts (TSFA), as a part of a six-mural project in Idaho funded by New Deal-era projects. The works cover all of the post office’s walls excluding the front wall and contains scenes based on life sketches depicting the everyday life of the Shoshone-Bannock peoples who live on the Fort Hall, Idaho, reservation. Their ancestral lands make up present day Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, Wyoming, and parts of Canada.

The Arrival Celebration and The Round-Up depict the western life of the Shoshone-Bannock peoples as they go about their day. In the background, he painted the distinct scenery of the vast Eastern Snake River Plain and the feeding ground that it provided for cattle. Along the mural’s wide expanse, the artist included scenes such as families travelling with horse-drawn wagons, people conversing on horseback, preparing covered wagons, cutting wood, and making meals with cattle roaming in the background. Standing Soldier also filled the scene with depictions of the traditional tipi dwellings of the tribes. The Round-Up portion of the mural shows a group of people as they work to rope and brand cattle.

His murals reflect the aims of the Treasury Section of Fine Arts in employing artists as well as establishing a western identity in art that everyday people could see for free in their day-to-day lives as they ran errands at the post office. Indeed, most New Deal-funded murals did not portray the Great Depression’s troubles, but rather displayed regional scenes of optimistic imagery and scenes of conviviality like the group cooking scene portrayed in Standing Soldier’s work.

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Louise Emerson Ronnebeck’s The Harvest is a Regionalist-style mural found in James A. Wetmore’s 1918-designed Wayne N. Aspinall Federal Building United States Courthouse in Grand Junction, Colorado. Completed in 1940 under the Treasury Section of Fine Arts, the mural hangs in the building’s post office today.

Art programs like the The Treasury Section of Fine Arts (TSFA) allowed for greater opportunities for women artists to work. In the typical process of creating TSFA murals, Ronnebeck, a prominent artist during the New Deal era, won the opportunity to paint The Harvest through an anonymous contest after she submitted a sample sketch. In 1940, when leading architect Louis A. Simon expanded the Wayne N. Aspinall Federal Building, Ronnebeck installed The Harvest to adorn the postmaster’s office door pediment with its distinct V-shaped bottom. 

Ronnebeck’s work prominently represents the history of the Ute people’s forced removal from Colorado throughout the nineteenth century. Before the 1860s, Ute people had lived in southwest Colorado for centuries and had established seasonal hunting grounds in the area. They also faced minimal encroachment from European and American settlers prior to the 1860s, until mineral interest drew more into the area. The United States government desired to increase land possession in the region. As such, they forced all seven Ute bands into a single reservation. Still, settlers intruded into reservation boundaries seeking minerals, further increasing hostility between the groups. Events like the Meeker Incident, in which a Ute group killed Agent Nathan Meeker, ten men, and took five others hostage, represented the hostility’s heights. The event culminated in an us-or-them sentiment. Settlers refused to leave, and by 1881, efforts to force the last Ute bands away from Colorado succeeded, with Southern Utes remaining within a sparse boundary. 

As six million acres once inhabited by the Utes became available for settlement, the Mesa County region attracted settlers who established local industries like orcharding, depicted through The Harvest’s Regionalist-style. Indeed, peaches make up more than seventy-five percent of Colorado’s fruit production today. Festivals such as 1909’s Peach Day display the fruit’s significant settler history in the area, dating back to the development of irrigation systems in the Grand Valley during the late 1800s and early 1900s. Numerous peach orchard establishments led to the Mesa area’s status as a highly concentrated peach district.

The Harvest depicts a couple in the foreground harvesting a peach crop. On the couple’s sides, Ronnebeck represents episodes of western settler and Native history. On the left, settlers move into the area with their horses. On the right, Ute people leave as settlers force them out into the painting’s background featuring Grand Junction’s mesas. As such, The Harvest is characteristic of New Deal-era TSFA murals. Most of them did not choose to focus on the Great Depression or generalized art focusing on universal features. Instead, paintings like The Harvest chose to focus on thriving local industries and impactful regional histories.

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Polly Duncan’s Cattle Round-Up, added to the Winnemucca Main Post Office as a part of its 1940 renovation project, provides a model example of the New Deal’s Federal Art Project and its goals. Constructed in 1921 by James A. Wetmore, the Neo-Classical Winnemucca Main Post Office was the original home of Cattle Round-Up and was the first federally constructed post office in the northern Nevada town. Today, Cattle Round-Up can be viewed in the city’s new post office building located on Hanson Street.      Polly Duncan, a Denver-based artist, completed the mural in 1942 under the Federal Works Agency Section of Fine Arts. Duncan worked in the 1930s under the mentorship of established Coloradan muralist Frank Mechau, who highlighted the beauty of natural western landscapes in his works. Accompanied by a collective of other young artists, she lived in a cottage located in Redstone, Colorado. She assisted Mechau on his own artistic endeavors during the winter of 1936.  Only one of three WPA murals in Nevada, the oil-on-canvas work depicts several cowboys in the foreground as they herd Hereford cows into a shed. In the background, the rest of the herd can be seen against the backdrop of the Nevada landscape with its expansive fields, reflecting the area’s significant local history in cattle ranching.  Emigrants first brought the cattle into the area during the 1840s on the Applegate and California trails, where groups founded cattle ranches in the 1850s. The vastness of the Humboldt River Valley landscape, with plenty of space for grazing, made the area a desirable location to raise cattle, and by the 1870s, the industry was thriving with the help of the Central Pacific Railroad’s shipping capabilities. The Hereford cattle depicted in Duncan’s mural were a particularly popular choice of livestock in 1890s Winnemucca for their faster maturation, which in turn enabled greater profits.    The mural is a common example of the type of artwork produced under the Section of Fine Arts-Federal Works Agency and represented the federal government’s goal to provide aid to local communities through employing artists to depict optimistic American images. Indeed, the New Deal-era murals did not typically portray the Great Depression’s difficulties or create generalized images of a geographic American identity. Rather, they often represented local communities. As such, the mural reflects the goals of building American cultural identity in the Intermountain West and democratizing American art as everyday people were able to interact with the image on their regular visits to the post office. 

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The Ogden City Municipal building has been used as a courthouse, jail, and government office since it was built and opened to the public in 1938. Today, it houses the main city offices: the finance division, the city council, and the entire department surrounding the mayor. The Municipal building was added to the National Register of Historical Places in 1983 as one of three outstanding art deco style buildings in Ogden. The building was designed by Leslie S. Hodgson and Myrle A. McClenahan. George A. Whimeyer & Sons supervised the construction. Twelve stories high, the main entrance of the building is centered on the east facade in a projecting flat-roofed pavilion capped with terra cotta trim. Symmetrically arranged from a rectangular base, side wings step down gradually from the taller central mass. The doors and transoms have a terra cotta surround. Period lamps in the Art Deco style flank the entrance. The exterior retains its historic integrity, and the interior maintains much of its original character. Especially notable are the marble dados, metal arid wood trim, plaster work, light fixtures, and patterned floors.

This building was built as a part of the federal relief program set in place during the Great Depression. Built in 1938, it comprised all of the Weber and Ogden official city buildings into one, conveniently located building within the heart of historic Ogden. It cost nearly one million dollars to construct. The Public Works Administration paid for nearly half and Ogden City and Weber County each contributed a little over a quarter of the total cost. The building's construction is a testament to the effectiveness of New Deal programs created during the Great Depression.   In 1996, the community rallied to save and renovate the building. Because of its importance to the community of Ogden and architectural history, a complete seismic renovation of this historic landmark was conducted by a consulting engineer.  A specially designed steel frame was lowered through the roof and floors to stiffen the structure. Woodwork was polished, light fixtures restored, and offices enovated. The building was reopened in October 2000 and continues housing the governmental needs of Ogden City. 

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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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