Utah Stories from the Beehive Archive

Urban spaces in twentieth century Utah are known for their vice -- gambling, prostitution and more. But did you know the last brothel to close in Utah was actually in a rural town? 

In the 1940s, new roads, affordable cars, and an interest in national parks meant that more Americans were packing up their vehicles and hitting the open road. For Black travelers driving through rural areas of Utah, the Green Book was a vital resource for getting around safely. 

There are only three roads in Utah that bridge the Colorado River, and only a handful of crossings. The ghost town of Dewey is one of those places and early settlers of the region made good use of this crossing.

A former railroad and ranching hub, the tiny settlement of Cisco became a ghost town after highway travel through the remote area was rerouted. But is Cisco still a ghost town today?

Down a bumpy canyon road in the Book Cliffs of southeastern Utah, curious travelers can find the ghost town of Sego. Named for Utah’s state flower, it’s a dusty coal town with a colorful past. 

Saddles, denim, country music, and… drag queens? It’s an unexpected combination but an important one for community and belonging in queer rural Utah. 

So, you are a giant aerospace company and you want to build a rocket plant: what do you look for?  This week, learn how one Utah town met all the requirements to become a center for the US rocket industry and how that decision forever changed its future.

In 1928, a women’s club in Moab adopted an official song that crowed: “In this little town of ours, we have a literary club, and we derive from it everything good, it helps the town and public in numerous ways.” Learn more about these women and their service.

Do you know where your food comes from? Utahns once depended on local butchers for fresh meat. But, in the early 1900s business boomed for the Ogden Union Stockyards, signaling a shift in how and where Utahns purchased their food.

Just around 45 miles west of Salt Lake City is a vast landscape shrouded in mystery and controversy. It’s also a holding place for some of the US military’s deadliest materials.

Potato growing clubs became all the rage in the early 20th century as interest in a formal agricultural education grew.

World War II and the Cold War brought the military to much of rural Utah, transforming those places in the process. The economic boost that followed was long-lasting in some communities, but devastatingly short-lived in others.

Rugged individualism is practically synonymous with the American West, and mountain men are the embodiment of that ideal. But the ideal tends to mask the real significance – and legacy – of mountain men in Utah.

Utah is home to five national parks that protect stunning red-rock landscapes. All but one of them began as a national monument. What's the difference, you may ask? Learn all about it.

Frontier life in late-nineteenth century Utah was rough. Today, many rural Utahns still struggle with access to medical care, but once upon a time midwives traveled throughout rural Utah, providing healthcare services to those in isolated areas.

When the United States was was created in the late 1700s, Thomas Jefferson had a vision of a nation built by individual family farmers. Here in Utah – we love farmers. But did we really live up to Jefferson’s ideal? 

Motels dotted Utah’s highways throughout the twentieth century, beckoning motorists to pull off the road and spend their tourist dollars in rural towns. Now that hotel chains dominate accommodation options, what happened to these locally owned motels?

Did you know that Utah is haunted? Our state has an estimated one hundred ghost towns. While reasons for their abandonment vary, ghost towns throughout rural Utah have one thing in common: our desire to idealize a lost past and try to connect to it in real time.

During World War II, a city of more than 8,000 people rose out of Utah's desert for three years, and then returned to dust. Find out more, after this. 

The rural Utah town of Orderville was once a communal utopia – until a single pair of pants scandalized the whole settlement.

This week learn about one family who made it their mission to preserve nature in the heart of a growing city – and they succeeded!

Before food blogs and Pinterest, Utah women shared their best recipes in community cookbooks. More than just recipes, these books kept rural foodways and food culture alive.

Back in the 1950s, Utah’s budget-slashing governor J. Bracken Lee wanted to close the first institution of higher education in eastern Utah – which he actually helped establish! But Utahns balked at his plan and stopped it. 

Nineteenth-century painters used Utah’s impressive landscape to promote an awe-inspiring vision of the American West through their art.

The creation of Carbon County in 1894 resulted from a rift between Mormon agriculturalists and non-Mormon miners, and illustrates the struggle over identity in rural Utah.