In 1932, unemployment in Utah was about 34 percent. Nearly every state west of the Mississippi River was struggling not only with unemployment but also with drought, erosion, and overgrazing. To solve these serious difficulties, President Franklin D. Roosevelt launched what would become arguably the most popular of his New Deal programs-the ......
In this creative memoir, Homer McCarty adopts the voice of seven-year-old Buck to recollect his own life growing up in rugged southern Utah Territory in the late 1800s. Although Buck's reflections are necessarily imprecise-gathered from fragments of memory and then embellished freely-the stories he tells are an honest look at life on the frontier. ......
Glen Canyon and the Struggle for the Soul of the West
In this classic narrative history of the construction of Glen Canyon Dam in the 1950s and 1960s, Russell Martin has captured the individual, cultural, political, and environmental dramas that brought into being the environmental movement we know today.Across the West, calls for the removal of hydroelectric dams constructed during the Bureau of ......
Alma Richards, as an unsung high school student, surprisingly set an Olympic record for the high jump in the 1912 Stockholm Olympics. He was the only native Utahn and member of the LDS church to win an Olympic gold medal in the twentieth century. After a stellar collegiate track career that saw him lead Cornell to three national championships, ......
The St. George Dinosaur Discovery Site at Johnson Farm
In February 2000, while excavating his property in St. George, Utah, Sheldon Johnson turned over a piece of ground and discovered a fully preserved dinosaur footprint. That track was the first of many fossils to be uncovered. Five years later, the St. George Dinosaur Discovery Site (SGDS) at Johnson Farm was established to preserve one of the ......
Nine Mile Canyon is famous the world over for its prehistoric rock art and remnants of ancient Fremont habitation. But it also teems with Old West history that is salted with iconic figures of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Last Chance Byway tells the stories of human endeavor and folly in a place historians have long ignored. The ......
In the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument and the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area
The Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument covers 1.7 million acres in southern Utah, offering the hiker an experience of deep solitude surrounded by a wealth of geological, biological, and archaeological treasures. Hiking the Escalante opens the door to exploration of this highly scenic area of meandering canyons with relatively few marked ......
The half century between statehood in 1896 and the end of World War II in 1945 was a period of transformation and transition for Utah. This book interprets those profound changes, revealing sweeping impacts on both institutions and ordinary people. Drawing upon expertise honed over decades of teaching, researching, and writing about Utah's ......
About 12,000 years ago, a major river ran from the Sevier Basin to the Great Salt Lake, feeding a wetland delta system and creating riparian habitat along its length. But after three thousand years the river dried up and the surrounding lands became more like what we see today. Because the Old River Bed Delta experienced less environmental and ......
