Utah Stories from the Beehive Archive

Barred from lucrative work and hounded by local residents, it took years of discrimination against Chinese workers to erase their contributions to Park City.

The depth, the dark, and the dangers inherent in coal mining created a uniquely hazardous work environment for miners in Utah at the turn of the twentieth century.

Hill Air Force Base is Utah’s sixth largest employer and military spending creates over $9 billion in economic activity for the State. Learn about the historic roots of Utah’s “Military Industrial Complex.”

A military hospital in Brigham City helped wounded soldiers and transformed the community during World War II.

Wings flashing in the sunlight, raucous calls filling the air, and tons of bird excrement coating the rocks. Learn about guano gathering out on the Great Salt Lake.

When she came to Utah to support striking coal miners, the Deseret News described her as a “vulgar, heartless, and vicious creature.” Learn about the “Miner’s Angel,” labor organizer “Mother” Jones.

Learn about the Provo Woolen Mills, the first large factory built in Utah.

Learn about the forced relocation of Ute people from lush central Utah to the remote Uinta Basin.  

Utah’s interurban railroads were the predecessors of light rail in Utah.

Thousands of Japanese Americans were forced into exile in the Utah desert during World War II.

A group of Russian pioneers sought a place to build their religious colony far from cities and government interference. Where else would they come but Utah?

Like many Utahns, Harold Seeholzer loved snow and skiing. But how did his enthusiasm for outdoor recreation turn into one of Cache Valley’s most notable ski resorts?

The voyage of Hawaiian Islanders to the windswept desert of Skull Valley could only have happened in Utah.

A grassroots movement of Utah citizens helped derail government plans to base the MX Missile System in Utah’s Great Basin.

Those who journeyed to Moab during the uranium mining boom that swept Utah in the 1950s and 1960s changed the tiny town forever.  

The United Order of Orderville, a Utopian living experiment, thrived for a decade in southern Utah.

On September 10, 1911, twelve Jewish families arrived in Gunnison, Utah, to establish a Jewish agricultural community.  The group was part of the “Back to Soil” movement, which believed Jews needed to leave the city and live on farms. The Gunnison colony, called Clarion, was one of many established throughout the United States, Canada, and Argentina.

Historic Copperton is a tiny town that defied the boom-bust cycle typical of mining towns.

The all-American game of baseball helped new immigrants adjust to life in Utah during the early 1900s.

Why would a bunch of young men from New York have spent the summer of 1933 digging ditches in Utah’s Willard Canyon?

A story of the fundraising efforts to help the victims of one of the deadliest mining disasters in American history, the 1900 explosion at Utah’s Winter Quarters Mine.

Every summer, thousands of people flee to the cool waters of Flaming Gorge Reservoir in Utah’s northeast corner.  But few of them would know about the little town of Linwood buried beneath the water’s surface.

Ghost Towns of the old west are generally relics of the mining industry, but Old La Sal in San Juan County is a now-deserted cow town.

Learn about the impact of federal spending in Utah during the Great Depression.

Find out why the Bank of Vernal, built in 1916, is nicknamed “The Parcel Post Bank”.