Utah Stories from the Beehive Archive

The vast plumbing infrastructure of the Central Utah Project is the culmination of Utah’s desires to move water to where we want it to be. Find out how complicated and contentious this endeavor has been.

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.

Utah’s limited water supply needs to be closely monitored! But this is nothing new. In Utah’s settler communities, the local watermaster was a vital figure, although not always the most popular one.

Utah boasts the greatest snow on earth, but the pristine powder isn’t always nature-made. The fake snow saves tourist seasons, but at what cost?

In the late 19th century, Black settlers in the Salt Lake Valley used the waters of Millcreek Canyon to create a thriving community of their own.

The search for more affordable, alternative energy sources is nothing new. Learn how a businessman in the late 1800s electrified rural Utah using a state-of-the-art hydroelectric system.

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 ground for the future.

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.

Frequent droughts and a growing population continue to raise the stakes for water access in Utah. Learn about a drawn-out conflict over water in Salt Lake City that shows how tensions between agricultural and municipal water users are hardly new.

What is it about a body of water that brings people together?  Learn about an infrastructure project on the Little Bear River that helped the Cache Valley community of Hyrum to flourish -- in more ways than one.

In the late 19th century, a Utah newspaper announced that the two whales swimming in Utah’s Great Salt Lake had added children to their family. Was this a scientific reality, or just a whale of a tale?

Winters in northern Utah’s Cache Valley are harsh. To survive and thrive, indigenous Shoshone peoples and Mormon settlers were faced with the question of “Will the challenges of winter make you or break you?”

The Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge protects an important -- but incredibly vulnerable -- part of northern Utah’s ecosystem. This is no accident. Learn how a mysterious illness and community activism led to its creation. 

Anyone who lives near Utah’s mountains knows how dangerous winter avalanches can be. Today, avalanches are closely monitored and relatively controlled. But it wasn’t always so. Learn about the 1897 avalanche in Provo Canyon that ended in tragedy.

The Utah Hot Springs Resort at the base of Ogden Canyon offered city dwellers an escape into nature -- but at what cost? Learn more about selling Ogden’s healing mineral springs.

Ancient caves in Utah’s arid West Desert may hold key information to Utah’s uncertain water future.

In the late 19th century, the town of Newton, Utah was almost abandoned. Crops died, there was no water for animals or people… So how did the town survive?

Maybe you’ve seen his paintings in Utah’s museums, or read his famous book called Our Inland Sea. Learn about 19th century artist Alfred Lambourne, who was Great Salt Lake’s biggest fan.

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.

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. 

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.

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?

Mark Twain famously joked that “Whiskey is for drinking, but water is for fighting over.” This week, find out how the struggle for water between two Utah towns led to a lawsuit that resulted in nearly an entire LDS ward being disfellowshipped.

The valley floor and cliffs of Clear Creek Canyon were sculpted over millions of years and evidence hints that humans moved along its waters as early as 8,000 years ago. You may have driven through this canyon yourself, but do you know the importance of this waterway to the generations of Native peoples who have lived there?

Public health is a common good that communities have long rallied around. In the early 20th Century, the highly infectious typhoid disease brought health experts and Utah’s citizens together to demand clean water and upgraded public water systems.