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The WPA Guide to Utah: The Beehive State
The WPA Guide to Utah: The Beehive State
The WPA Guide to Utah: The Beehive State
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The WPA Guide to Utah: The Beehive State

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During the 1930s in the United States, the Works Progress Administration developed the Federal Writers’ Project to support writers and artists while making a national effort to document the country’s shared history and culture. The American Guide series consists of individual guides to each of the states. Little-known authorsmany of whom would later become celebrated literary figureswere commissioned to write these important books. John Steinbeck, Saul Bellow, Zora Neale Hurston, and Ralph Ellison are among the more than 6,000 writers, editors, historians, and researchers who documented this celebration of local histories. Photographs, drawings, driving tours, detailed descriptions of towns, and rich cultural details exhibit each state’s unique flavor.

Utah, a state which is well known for its distinct religious history, is thoroughly examined in this WPA Guide, with an entire chapter on the relationship between the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the state of Utah. The Beehive State, also known for its natural beauty and plentiful resources, also contains several pictures of the Great Salt Lake and mountainous desert landscape as well as an interesting essay on mining.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateOct 31, 2013
ISBN9781595342423
The WPA Guide to Utah: The Beehive State

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    The WPA Guide to Utah - Federal Writers' Project

    UTAH

    A Guide to the State

    The WPA Guide to

    Utah

    The Beehive State

    Trinity University Press

    San Antonio

    Published in 2014 by Trinity University Press

    San Antonio, Texas 78212

    www.tupress.org

    This book was first published as part of the Works Progress Administration’s Federal Writers' Project, a United States federal government project to fund written work and support writers during the Great Depression. It has been published in various editions, but this edition replicates the original. Trinity University Press is proud to make these books available through the WPA Guides to America Digital Library.

    978-1-59534-242-3 ebook

    Foreword

    Did you know that Theodore Roosevelt once took a bath beneath Rainbow Bridge; that Leland Stanford, when he swung on the Golden Spike, missed; that Samuel Untermyer, trust-busting attorney, received the largest fee ever paid a lawyer for bringing about a merger of the Utah Copper Company with eastern interests; that Utah, a desert State, has a sea serpent story; that many of the wisest men a century ago predicted disaster for Mormon colonization of Utah under the direction of the Church President, Brigham Young?

    Solid information interwoven with many a fascinating true story fills the pages of this book, written to make available to people without and within the State the facts about Utah—its places, its resources, its people. Complete coverage, accuracy, and readability was the threefold goal. The large measure of success attained should make this book invaluable to schools, libraries, students, and casual readers alike.

    Fully as significant, the Utah Guide supplies a glowing example of how reservoirs of unemployed labor and talent may be used to furnish the power for unique achievements that are valuable socially, artistically, and economically.

    GAIL MARTIN

    Chairman, Utah State Institute

    of Fine Arts

    June 1, 1940

    Preface

    When Lansford W. Hastings wrote his Emigrant’s Guide to Oregon and California, published at Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1845, urging use of the Hastings Cutoff across the Salt Desert to California, he produced the first guide book to treat even partially the present area of Utah. Hastings’ book recommended a wagon route that could be traversed with difficulty on horseback, but it led wagon travelers, such as the Donner party, to tragedy. This guide to the Utah of 1941 is more conservative. One of a series prepared especially for automobile travelers on hard roads in the forty-eight States, it warns the traveler of rough stretches, quicksands, and waterless deserts. Lesser-known areas, reached only on shoe or saddle leather, are treated cautiously and factually, without the Hastings bravado.

    The collective author has striven for accuracy, but in sifting thousands of facts from fifteen million words of field material, has no doubt fallen short in many instances. Where error is observed, we should appreciate substantiated corrections, looking toward the possibility of a future edition. This book has, indeed, a collective author. Local, county, State, and Federal agencies, transportation firms, commercial associations, motor clubs, newspapers, travel agencies, and hundreds of individuals have been of assistance in furnishing and checking material. Educational institutions—the University of Utah, Utah State Agricultural College, Brigham Young University, and others—have helped liberally in special fields. Librarians have been generous with their facilities, including Alvin Smith, L. D. S. Church librarian; Miss Julia T. Lynch, librarian, and Miss Johanna Sprague, former librarian, of the Salt Lake City Public Library; and Professor Esther Nelson, librarian of the University of Utah. Dozens of technical consultants have given their time and special knowledge in reading and correcting manuscript; space permits listing only a limited number of them in the Appendices.

    In preparation of the text, too, the author was collective. The Utah Writers’ Project takes pride in its cooperation with other projects: The Utah Art Project prepared art work and maps; William Wallace Ashby, Jr., executed the head pieces and Robert M. Jones the tail pieces. The Utah Historical Records Survey opened its files for much historical data, and aided the Writers’ Project in preparation of the History essay, the Chronology, and the Selected Reading List. The Utah Adult Education Project provided the services of N. Field Winn for writing the articles on Geography and Climate, Geology, and Natural Resources and Conservation. Kenneth Borg, of the WPA Division of Operations, prepared the article on Irrigation.

    Special thanks are due Mr. John M. Mills of Ogden and Mr. A. William Lund, assistant historian of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, both of whom read the completed manuscript, corrected errors, and added essential material.

    Maurice L. Howe, former State and regional director, and Charles K. Madsen, former State Supervisor, are responsible for gathering most of the factual matter presented in this book, and final work on the guide was done with the editorial co-operation of Darel McConkey of the WPA Writers’ Program.

    Population figures used are preliminary 1940 reports by the Census Bureau, subject to slight correction after issuance in 1941 of final figures.

    DALE L. MORGAN

    State Supervisor

    Contents

    FOREWORD, by Gail Martin

    PREFACE

    GENERAL INFORMATION

    CALENDAR OF ANNUAL EVENTS

    Part I. Utah’s Background

    CONTEMPORARY SCENE

    NATURAL SETTING

    ARCHEOLOGY AND INDIANS

    HISTORY

    THE MORMON CHURCH

    AGRICULTURE

    IRRIGATION

    INDUSTRY AND COMMERCE

    MINING

    TRANSPORTATION

    EDUCATION

    RECREATION

    PRESS AND RADIO

    THE ARTS

    Part II. Bonneville Bench Cities

    LOGAN

    OGDEN

    PROVO

    SALT LAKE CITY

    Part III. Highways and Dugways

    TOUR 1: (Preston, Idaho)—Logan—Ogden—Salt Lake City—Provo—St. George—(Las Vegas, Nev.) [US 91]

    Section a.Idaho Line to Logan

    Section b.Logan to Ogden

    Section c.Ogden to Salt Lake City

    Section d.Salt Lake City to Spanish Fork

    Section e.Spanish Fork to Beaver

    Section f.Beaver to Arizona Line

    Section g.Arizona Line (through Arizona) to Nevada Line

    TOUR 1A: Ogden—Huntsville—Woodruff [State 39]

    TOUR 1B: Murray—Brighton [State 173, State 152, and Big Cottonwood Road]

    TOUR 1C: Junction with US 91—Midvale—Bingham—Utah Copper Mine [State 48]

    TOUR 1D: Beaver—Milford—(Ely, Nev.) [State 21]

    TOUR 1E: Andersons Ranch—Zion Natl. Park—Mt. Carmel Junction [State 15]

    TOUR 2: (Montpelier, Idaho)—Salt Lake City—Spanish Fork—Kanab—(Fredonia, Ariz.) [US 89]

    Section a.Idaho Line to Spanish Fork

    Section b.Spanish Fork to Richfield

    Section c.Richfield to Junction with State 12

    Section d.Junction with State 12 to Arizona Line

    TOUR 2A: Sigurd—Loa—Green River [State 24]

    TOUR 3: (Malad, Idaho)—Plymouth—Junction with US 30 S [US 191]

    TOUR 4: (Evanston, Wyo.)—Brigham—Tremonton—(Burley, Idaho) [US 30 S]

    Section a.Wyoming Line to Brigham

    Section b.Brigham to Idaho Line

    TOUR 5: Junction with US 30S—Coalville—Kamas—Provo [US 189]

    TOUR 6: (Craig, Colo)—Salt Lake City—Wendover—(Elko, Nev.) [US 40]

    Section a.Colorado Line to Duchesne

    Section b.Duchesne to Salt Lake City

    Section c.Salt Lake City to Nevada Line

    TOUR 6A: Mills—Tooele—Junction with US 6

    TOUR 7: (Grand Junction, Colo.)—Price—Magna—(Elko, Nev.) [US 50]

    Section a.Colorado Line to Price

    Section b.Price to the North Junction with US 91

    Section c.North Junction with US 91 to Nevada Line

    TOUR 8: Santaquin—Eureka—Delta—(Ely, Nev.) [US 6]

    TOUR 9: Crescent Junction—Moab—(Cortez, Colo.) [US 160]

    TOUR 10: Monticello—Blanding—Mexican Hat—(Tuba City, Ariz.) [State 47]

    Part IV. Parks and Primitive Areas

    ARCHES NATIONAL MONUMENT

    BRYCE CANYON NATIONAL PARK

    CAPITOL REEF NATIONAL MONUMENT

    CEDAR BREAKS NATIONAL MONUMENT

    DINOSAUR NATIONAL MONUMENT

    GREAT SALT LAKE

    HIGH UINTAS PRIMITIVE AREA

    HOVENWEEP NATIONAL MONUMENT

    NATURAL BRIDGES NATIONAL MONUMENT

    RAINBOW BRIDGE NATIONAL MONUMENT

    TIMPANOGOS CAVE NATIONAL MONUMENT

    ZION NATIONAL PARK

    Part V. Appendices

    CHRONOLOGY

    SELECTED READING LIST

    LIST OF CONSULTANTS

    INDEX

    Illustrations

    THE SETTING I

    Zion National Park

    Courtesy Zion Easter Pageant Committees

    Mountain Window, Zion-Mt. Carmel Highway

    In the High Uintas—Hayden Peak (Right Center)

    Robert Davis: Utah Recreation Project, WPA

    Brilliant-Hued Bryce Canyon

    Goosenecks of the San Juan

    Bolton’s Studio

    Sipapu Natural Bridge—Natural Bridges National Monument

    Courtesy Department of the Interior

    Rainbow Bridge

    Courtesy Gillham Advertising Co.

    Mount Timpanogos

    Courtesy Chamber of Commerce, Provo

    On the Toe of the Mountain—a Farm in Box Elder County

    Lee: F.S.A.

    One of the Chain Lakes, Uinta Mountains

    Robert Davis

    Colorado River, Near Rainbow Bridge

    Courtesy Norman Nevills

    Great Salt Lake—Salt Evaporation Beds in Foreground

    Highton: F.W.A.

    Boat Pier on Great Salt Lake, Near Salt Lake City

    Highton: F.W.A.

    THE MORMONS

    The Temple, Salt Lake City

    Courtesy Gillham Advertising Agency

    Mormon Tithing House, Salt Lake City (1869)

    Courtesy Union Pacific Railroad and Salt Lake Tribune

    Brigham Young (c. 1850)

    Courtesy L.D.S. Church

    Joseph Smith

    Courtesy L.D.S. Church

    Mormon Tabernacle under Construction in the 1860’s

    A C. R. Savage Photograph: Courtesy L.D.S. Church

    Baptistry, Salt Lake Temple

    Copyright, 1940, by the Corporation of the President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. All rights reserved.

    This Is the Place Monument, Salt Lake City

    Sagebrush Desert, Box Elder County

    Lee: F.S.A.

    Irrigated Land on the Outskirts of Logan

    Lee: F.S.A.

    The Hamblin Home, Santa Clara, (c. 1870)

    Courtesy Nels Anderson

    Jacob Hamblin, Mormon Missionary to the Indians

    Logan Temple

    Courtesy Smith Printing Co.

    Tabernacle, St. George Lion House, Salt Lake City

    Courtesy Dale L. Morgan

    Beehive House —The Brigham Young Mansion

    Highton: F.W.A.

    AGRICULTURE

    Dry Farm, Cache County

    Lee: F.S.A.

    Highline Canal, Strawberry Valley

    Courtesy Department of the Interior

    Farm Home, Centerville

    Lee H. Olsen

    Mormon Hay Stacker

    Lee: F.S.A.

    Wheat Harvest, Strawberry Volley

    Courtesy Department of the Interior

    Mormon Farm Family

    Lee: F.S.A.

    Guernsey Bull Owned by a Farm Cooperative

    Lee: F.S.A.

    Sweet Corn

    Lee: F.S.A.

    Sheep Camp, Beaver Creek

    Shipp: U. S. Forest Service

    Counted In for Summer Pasture

    Clime: U. S. Forest Service

    Draft Colts

    Lee: F.S.A.

    Rodeo Stock

    Courtesy Salt Lake Tribune

    Peach Orchard Cache County

    Lee: F.S.A.

    Berry Pickers, Near Logan

    Lee: F.S.A.

    INDUSTRY

    Copper Pit, Bingham Canyon

    Courtesy Utah Copper Co.

    Ore Concentration Mill, Park City

    Courtesy Silver King Coalition Co.

    Ore Train, Bingham Canyon

    Courtesy Utah Copper Co.

    Smelter Smoke, Garfield

    Lee A. Olsen

    Coal Miners, Columbia

    Courtesy Columbia Steel Co.

    Coal Loader in a Carbon County Mine

    Courtesy Aberdeen Coal Co.

    Steel Ingredients—Iron and Limestone

    Courtesy Columbia Steel Co.

    Trucking Sugar Beets

    Courtesy Utah-Idaho Sugar Co.

    Sugar in Storage

    Courtesy Utah-Idaho Sugar Co.

    Canning—A Leading Utah Industry

    In a Salt Lake City Brewery

    Courtesy Fisher Brewing Co.

    Salt Piler, Near Salt Lake City

    Courtesy Royal Crystal Salt Co.

    Plowing Salt

    Courtesy Royal Crystal Salt Co.

    TOWN AND CITY

    Rotunda, State Capitol

    Courtesy Salt Lake Chamber of Commerce

    State Capitol, Salt Lake City

    Highton: F.W.A.

    Airview of Temple Square, Salt Lake City

    Courtesy Salt Lake Tribune

    State Capitol

    Courtesy Salt Lake Chamber of Commerce

    Utah State Agricultural College, Logan

    Courtesy Smith Printing Co.

    High School Gymnasium, Springville

    Lee A. Olsen

    Commencement Parade, University of Utah

    Courtesy University of Utah

    Maeser Memorial Building, Brigham Young University, Provo

    Lee A. Olsen

    Downtown Ogden

    Courtesy Ogden Chamber of Commerce

    Wendover, A Desert Town on the Nevada Line

    Rothstein: F.S.A.

    Main Street, Brigham City

    Lee: F.S.A.

    Seagull Monument, Salt Lake City

    Highton: F.W.A.

    THE SETTING II

    Taking Off at 9,000 Feet, Alta Ski Run

    Lee A. Olsen

    Forest Ranger on Mt. Timpanogos Trail

    Shipp: U. S. Forest Service

    Pack Trip in the High Uintas

    Robert Davis: Utah Recreation Project, WPA

    View Across the Wash in Capitol Reef National Monument

    Courtesy Utah Museum Association

    Bridal Veil Falls, Provo Canyon

    Courtesy Provo Chamber of Commerce

    In the American Fork Canyon, Wasatch National Forest

    Courtesy U. S. Forest Service

    White Water Fishing, Logan Canyon

    Shaffer: U. S. Forest Service

    Deer Hunters’ Camp in Beaver Canyon

    Koziol: U. S. Forest Service

    Aspens on Boulder Plateau

    Swan: U. S. Forest Service

    Buck and Fawn

    Shipp and Parkinson: U. S. Forest Service

    Seagulls, Great Salt Lake

    Courtesy Utah State Fish and Game Commission

    Boat Basin, Great Salt Lake

    Darel McConkey

    YESTERDAYS

    Old Salt Palace, Salt Lake City

    Courtesy L. D. S. Church

    Early Street Scene, Salt Lake City

    A. C. R. Savage Photo: Courtesy L. D. S. Church

    Old Cove Fort

    (Note remnants of rifleman’s platform over gate.)

    Old Ranch House, Near Ibapah

    Lee A. Olsen

    Empey House (c. 1855), Salt Lake City

    Lee A. Olsen

    Erastus Snow House (1875), Santa Clara

    Bauman Adobe House (1874), Santa Clara

    Ogden Canyon (c. 1870)

    Courtesy U. S. Geological Survey

    Green River

    Courtesy U. S. Geological Survey

    Quarrying Granite for the Mormon Temple (c. 1871)

    Courtesy U. S. Geological Survey

    Frisco, Utah’s Richest Silver Town, in the 1870’s

    Butch Cassidy (Right) and His Gang in 1900

    N. H. Rose Collection, San Antonio, Texas

    Meeting of the Trains at Promontory (1869)

    A. C. R. Savage Photo

    Pack-Mule Post to Boulder

    Princess Alice (b. 1875)

    INDIANS

    Making Navaho Bread

    Charles Kelly

    Mastodon Petroglyph, Near Moab

    Courtesy Frank Silvey

    Rock Pictures, Natural Bridges National Monument

    Ruins of Prehistoric Houses, Hovenweep National Monument

    Courtesy Norman Nevills

    Poncho House, Southeastern Utah

    Courtesy Norman Nevills

    Navaholand—Monument Valley

    Charles Kelly

    Navaho Hogan

    Roy and Brownie Adams

    Navahos on the Move

    Charles Kelly

    Navaho Medicine Man in Costume

    Roy and Brownie Adams

    Painting by Gordon Cope of John Duncan, Ute Chief

    R. M. Jones

    Ouray (Center) and Sub-chiefs of the Southern Ute

    Smithsonian Institution

    Ute Indian (c. 1860)

    A. C. R. Savage Photograph: Courtesy L. D. S. Church

    Ute Farmer

    Courtesy U. S. Indian Service

    Navaho Medicine Man with Sand Painting Used in Healing Rites

    Roy and Brownie Adams

    Hogan on the Shivwit Reservation

    Dr. D. E. Beck

    Maps

    LOGAN

    OGDEN

    PROVO

    TEMPLE SQUARE AREA, SALT LAKE CITY

    SALT LAKE CITY

    UNIVERSITY OF UTAH

    STATE MAP

    General Information

    Railroads: Denver & Rio Grande Western (D. & R. G. W.) R.R., Southern Pacific, Union Pacific (U. P.) R.R., Western Pacific R.R. Four electric lines furnish intrastate service.

    Bus Lines: Burlington Trailways, Denver-Salt Lake-Pacific Trailways, Greyhound Lines, Overland Stages, Rio Grande Trailways, Santa Fe Trailways, Union Pacific Stages. Other lines provide intrastate service.

    Air Lines: United Air Lines (transcontinental, New York City, Seattle, San Francisco), Western Air Express (Salt Lake City to Los Angeles and San Diego, and Salt Lake City to Yellowstone National Park in season).

    Waterways: Boats are available at Moab for adventure trips on the Colorado River and at Mexican Hat for trips on the San Juan River. Boats for trips on Great Salt Lake are for hire at the boat pier near Garfield.

    Highways: Nine Federal highways, more than 100 State roads. State police patrol main highways. No boundary inspection. State gasoline tax 4¢. Filling stations frequent on main-traveled roads, sometimes widely separated in desert areas. Advisable to carry extra water, oil, and gasoline on some roads (inquire locally, and see Tours). Free Road Maps issued annually by Utah State Road Commission and by oil companies.

    Traffic Regulations: Maximum speed on State highways, 50 m.p.h.; highway signs indicate restricted speeds through cities, on mountain and canyon roads, in school zones and congested areas. Hand signals. Nonresidents should register their cars with a State agency five days after entering the State; Utah license plates required after sixty days.

    Accommodations: Larger cities and towns on main highways have adequate hotels and tourist camps. In isolated small communities, room and board can usually be obtained from local residents.

    Climate and Equipment: In the mountains during summer months, days are warm and nights cold. Rainstorms are frequent in higher mountain passes. Travel should not be attempted at high altitudes earlier than June or later than October. Main highways are usually clear of snow in winter, but may be temporarily blocked during severe snowstorms. Visitors should dress for warm weather in summer (but should remember the cowboy dictum that light clothes are not always cool clothes in the desert). Modified cowboy garb is recommended for roughing it in the mountains and deserts, Levi’s (bibless overalls), denim shirt, broad hat, sun glasses, a bandanna to keep out the sand and protect the neck from sunburn, cowboy or laced boots (oxfords are sand-catchers and do not protect the ankles from cacti and snakes), a jacket, sweater, or light coat for cool evenings, and gloves to protect the hands in climbing rocks and rustling firewood. Rubber or cord soles are best for climbing over slickrocks. Well-advised tenderfeet keep shirt collars buttoned and sleeves rolled down, for the desert and high mountain sun burns unmercifully. Slicker or slicker-type poncho helps in case of mountain rains. Equipment for extended horseback or pack trips normally furnished by commercial packers.

    Photography: Clarity of atmosphere at high altitudes throughout Utah makes the light much more intense than in humid areas, and actinic values of light are much higher. Visitors to the State would be wise to use a light meter before each shot, translating the reading always on the side of the faster shutter speeds and tighter aperture—a good rule also for those who take photos by the peep and snap method. Light values vary enormously from full-lighted to shaded spots. Use yellow filter for cloud effects. Slower types of film apt to give best results. Odd-size photographic film and color film are more readily obtainable in larger population centers.

    Recreation Areas: Utah has ten national forests, and parts of each are equipped with picnicking and camping facilities, including fire pits, picnic tables, safe water, and restrooms. Fires should be built only at designated places, within a ten-foot circle clear of inflammable material, and should be put dead out before leaving. Matches should be broken, with one finger on the burnt end, before they are thrown away. Cigarettes and pipe dregs should be stamped into humus-free soil. For other recreation grounds see Recreation, and Parks and Primitive Areas.

    Fishing: Game fish are defined as trout, black bass, mountain herring, silver salmon, catfish, whitefish, crappie, and perch. Seven-inch limit on bass, trout, salmon and herring. Day’s limit of ten pounds or thirty fish. Game fish season, usually June 15 through October, is proclaimed annually by State Fish and Game Commissioner. Resident license $2, non-resident license $3, required for game and common fish, which include carp, sucker, and chub (open season year round). Closed waters designated by signs. No fishing 9 P.M. to 4 A.M. Fishing on horseback is forbidden.

    Hunting: Resident hunting license $3, combined hunting and fishing license $4; non-resident hunting (deer and bear excepted) and fishing license $10, bear and deer license $20; season for deer and game birds set by proclamation of Fish and Game Commissioner. Limited number of elk licenses issued each year. Federal duck stamps required for hunting waterfowl, season fixed by Federal government. Wild rabbits are fair game the year round, without license, but are apt to be diseased in summer. Seagulls are protected by State law. No open season on big-horn sheep, mountain goat, antelope, or moose, except by proclamation. Hunting from an airplane is forbidden.

    Liquor Regulations: 3.2 per cent beer sold in public places, with or without meals, and on room-service order. Wines and liquors sold only at State stores, usually identifiable by frosted windows and venetian blinds, and at package agencies in privately operated business places (inquire locally). One-year liquor license, 50¢, obtainable at liquor stores.

    Poisonous Plants: Three-leafed poison ivy, with foliage bearing an irritating oil, occurs throughout the State, except in deserts. If infected, wash exposed parts with strong soap and warm water; calamine lotion or sugar of lead are good counteractives after irritation sets in. Plant has seductively gorgeous foliage in fall. Lupine, growing on mountain slopes and foothills, has poisonous foliage; treat similarly to poison ivy. Stinging nettle, irritating but non-poisonous, occurs among thick growths in canyons and along rivers; sting is eased by vaseline or cold cream.

    Poisonous Reptiles and Insects: Rattlesnakes, of the smaller varieties, range nearly all over the State. Wear high-top shoes or leggings for protection, use hands with care in climbing rocky places. Use tourniquet between bite and heart, releasing it occasionally to permit circulation; incise wound a quarter of an inch deep, suck out poison, but lips and mouth should be free of sores; pack incision with potassium permanganate crystals; give patient plenty of water, keep him warm and quiet; get a doctor. Gila monster, with poisonous bite, found in lower parts of southern Utah; treatment same as for snake bite. Scorpions occur in rocks and deserts; their sting has about the same intensity as that of a hornet and is treated the same way—with a pinch of wet soda or a dab of ammonia. Tarantulas, huge black or brown spiders, occur in desert areas, but there is no record of anyone in Utah having been bitten by one. Black widow spiders, identifiable by red hourglass on abdomen, have serious poison bite; put patient to bed, give copious quantities of non-spirituous fluids, treat wound with iodine, get a doctor. Wood ticks, flat, brown insects about a quarter of an inch long, are carriers of Rocky Mountain spotted fever, a disease with a high mortality rate. Persons who frequent mountains, wooded sections, or even deserts should be inoculated against the fever (vaccination is provided by the U. S. Public Health Service). Infection may result after a tick penetrates the skin and feeds two hours or longer. Examine body frequently for ticks, remove those that have penetrated the skin with a steady straight pull, preferably with tweezers; outdoorsmen say a tick will back out of the skin if covered with a drop of turpentine or kerosene. If head pulls off, open skin and remove it, treating wound with a good disinfectant.

    Water: For complete safety, all questionable water should be boiled before use, to obviate typhoid infection or cramps, sometimes caused by alkali water when drunk by those not accustomed to it.

    Calendar of Annual Events

    PART I

    Utah’s Background

    Contemporary Scene

    THE Mormon habitat has always been a vortex of legend and lie. Even today, as the State settles down to gray hairs, there lingers something wonderful and outrageous about Utah, a flavor of the mysterious and strange. Many still journey to Utah to see a Mormon.

    Even if there had been no background of Joseph Smith, Angel Moroni, and the Book of Mormon, Utahns would have been incomprehensible, misunderstood and lied about, because they set down in the book of Western history the most stubbornly cross-grained chapter it contains. All the conventions of Western life in Utah went haywire. Only late, and briefly, did Utahns turn feverish, like their neighbors, with get-rich-quickness. Wars of cattle baron and homesteader dissolved at Utah’s borders, because farmers had come first to the creeks. Lynch law wandered into the bishops’ courts to sit in the back pews and watch, bemused, the quiet sanity of theological justice. Immaculate woman and scarlet woman together lifted their petticoats to take flight before family migrations and polygamy. Utah has always had a way of doing things different. The rest of the country has never quite got over it.

    Much of that pioneer distinctiveness survives in Utah life, although the forces of twentieth century civilization have shaped Utah into patterns of conformance, so that there are fewer outward stigmata to a Utahn, and somewhat less wild speculation about him. Most visitors now betray no disappointment at finding Mormons hornless.

    Utahn is regarded as almost synonymous with Mormon, although there have always been those who would quarrel fiercely with this assumption. Although the total Church membership (Church meaning always the Church) numbers perhaps only three-fifths of the population, the particular quality of Utah life is almost wholly Mormon. Whatever there is of substance to the gentile influence represents, if native to Utah, a reaction to Mormon culture rather than anything distinctive in its own right. Two blocks in Salt Lake City stand as the tangible heart and center of Mormon Utah—Temple Square and the adjacent eastern block where stand the modern Church offices and the pioneer structures raised by Brigham Young. But the vital texture of Mormon culture is something much more broadspread—the honest old adobe houses, the villages nestling in the valley bottoms, the people themselves.

    Mormon Utah is primarily that fertile strip of occupied land, down through the north-central part of the State, lying at the foot of the Wasatch mountain rampart. Four-fifths of the population lives here, in towns that vary from metropolitan Salt Lake City to humble villages that are distinguishable as towns only by their general store and sturdy meeting house. This densely populated area, said to sustain more persons to the acre than even crowded Japan, is the great monument to Mormon endeavor, although the log or adobe houses built by Utah’s founding fathers rise from creek bottoms all over the State.

    Even in this richest and oldest-settled area, the stamp of a pioneer culture is everywhere manifest. Grandsires built too sturdily, albeit of such building materials as wood and mud, for the pioneer period to have lost its substance. Even in Salt Lake City old adobe houses stand up indomitably to the years, the very earth of their dooryards seeming to have crumbled sooner. In smaller towns these houses retain their pioneer flavor of accomplishment; often they are still the best houses in town, despite modern structures of pressed brick, white-painted wood, or stone. There are few flourishes to such buildings. They stand upon the earth, compact and designed to live in, the bare high walls weathered native gray. Almost always these houses are shadowed by trees. If houses could not stand as monuments to a culture, trees, gardens, and sheer greenness could. The cities themselves, almost universally set four-square to the directions, reflect an ideal of spacious and noble planning. Exigencies of one kind and another have invaded the grand sweep of pioneer planning, but nothing is more quickly remarkable to visitors than the breadth and straightness of the streets, the width of the sidewalks, and the length of blocks in Utah cities. And all the cities are tree-grown, comfortable with homes and lawns and gardens and flowering shrubs.

    Not in this greenest area but in the outlands most nearly survives the old Mormon society. Few gentiles have found that hard land to their liking; they have settled instead in the cities, and cast there the social and physical weight of their differentness. The Mormon wards, or local congregations, in the rural villages comprise from ten to a hundred families living on terms of social intimacy unknown in the cities. Every man is every man’s neighbor; all the children go to the same school; the families go together on Sunday to meeting, or to the canyons on outings. Perhaps the sons and daughters sing in the choir; certainly they go together to the dances, bazaars, and banquets held in the meeting house. Only the richer communities have church buildings sufficiently elaborate to boast chapel and amusement hall both; characteristically the meeting house serves all community purposes unless the school building is called into use. Until gentile accession to political power in the late eighties, the meeting house served also for school.

    Always the most important person in the ward is the bishop. He may also be mayor or justice of the peace or some other officer of civil distinction, but to the people his authority stems first of all from his bishopric, because he there most nearly satisfies their daily needs. He may settle a dispute, officiate at a dance, preside at a marriage, or sign a recommend for a member planning temple work for his dead. On Sunday nights at Sacrament meeting, he has words of advice for the brethren, advice temporal as much as spiritual. The bishop is heart and center of a way of living, as close to the earth and the people as his grandfather, who may conceivably in his own time have served as bishop.

    Something of this close-knit social fabric is common also to the cities, but the very size of the cities has broken down the completeness of intimacy. Schools are numerous, and school districts do not conform to ward boundaries; life is more complex generally; and gentiles live intermingled with Mormons. In the cities, indeed, gentile has become almost a word of lost significance, though in the outlying areas it is still a term of sharp differentiation. Yet Mormon feels closer to Mormon always, out of the long community of tradition, despite the forces of depression, and intermarriage, which have worked quietly to break down all distinctions among Utahns.

    It is surprising how little of color survives out of the years of turmoil. The violent days of struggle between Mormon and anti-Mormon, polygamist and anti-polygamist, have faded almost to nothing. Polygamy has become almost legendary; the generation coming now of age marvels almost as greatly as outsiders that polygamy was once a part of the Utah way of life. There are a very few polygamists still alive, patriarchs looking back over the full years, but even among the Mormons there are few who number a polygamist among their acquaintances. In ordinary living, polygamy survives chiefly in a consciousness of relatives. Utah families are larger today than the national average—larger than Utah’s apparent capacity to retain the increase—but even monogamic families in times past ran to far greater size, and Utahns have relatives enough in the straight line of descent; the genealogical ramifications consequent upon polygamy—half-granduncles and grandaunts, half second- third- fourth- and fifth-cousins—are such that the typical Utahn of old Mormon descent never inquires into the full extent of his relationships, content to stipulate vaguely that he may be distantly related to a tenth of the population of the State.

    Mormons live perhaps more comfortably in Utah than non-Mormons, because the major pattern of the State’s life is Mormon-made; Mormons are not, like gentiles, under the necessity of challenging the structure of their social life. Probably in no other State is there so acute a religious consciousness as in Utah; there continues, not obviously, an undercurrent social antagonism that is, however, only a vestigial feeling out of the long warfare. Some of the anti-Church feeling derives also from the idealogical developments affecting other churches in other States, in the iconoclastic attitudes taken by the younger generation toward all churches and religions; if it is stronger here, the feeling grows out of greater helplessness toward a more strongly integrated church. The Church stands likewise as an embodiment of convention, in a time when convention and tradition are being broken upon the distress of American society; inevitably there are rebels to speak against it. For most Utahns, however, the Church contributes to a more comfortable life—it is itself a whole way of living.

    The West, in popular argot, has always been radical—and Utah especially so. That is in part an Eastern egotism, which finds outrageous that which for excellently good reasons does not conform to the Eastern idea of how things should be done. But it is in the nature of Utah contrariety, perhaps a consequence in part of the strong New England breed which shaped Mormon beginnings, that Utahns in general are pronouncedly conservative, though lately consistent Democrats. In part this conservatism stems from the binding forces of Church convention and Church morality, and the homogeneity of the racial stock, which is not only more than 99 per cent white, but is almost wholly Anglo-Scandinavian; there has been no social conflict of racial groups to facilitate unrest. There is probably a greater emphasis upon the family in Utah than generally in the country; there is probably less drinking, less smoking, and perhaps less card-playing; certainly there is a greater disposition to stay put. Yet this conservatism certainly is not insularism. Probably there is a greater cosmopolitan leavening to Utah society, urban and rural, than anywhere in the country; there is hardly a village that does not contain one or more persons who have served upwards of two years as a Church missionary in distant lands—Europe, Africa, South America, Australia, or even Japan.

    Utah’s neighborliness is often remarked by visitors; here the years tell their own tale, for outlanders frequently, in early days, were viewed with a chill and suspicious eye. Utah socially is not large enough, or complex enough, to have mastered wholly the art of minding its own business—an art which can be carried to extremes. Many have settled in Utah for no other reason than this over-the-fence sort of friendliness, although there are those who have left the State in a wholehearted quest for more privacy. The State is also too close to its pioneer beginnings for the social amenities to come with entire grace. Art has been backward, and literature and music have been subordinated to religious ends. Education has been a pride of Utahns, who point to one of the highest literacy ratings in the country, but the State has not been sufficiently rich either economically or socially to attract from outside the mature, reflective minds that enrich popular living; indeed, Utah has lost many of its own sons and daughters to areas of greater opportunity. In a State where seven of twenty-nine counties lack a bank, eight a railroad, and several a telegraph line, it is inevitable that there should be some social lags.

    Utah has its own characteristic symbolisms. Most omnipresent is the beehive. It occurs on the State seal, on the university seal, on the Beehive House in Salt Lake City, on the masthead of newspapers, on the Mormon-owned Hotel Utah in Salt Lake City, on top of policemen’s call boxes, on every conceivable interior decoration, on places of business. Four names, drawn direct from Utah history, occur in probably every city of size in the State—there are Beehive laundries, Seagull loan companies, Deseret cafes, and Zion stores, or any imaginable reshuffling of the four. Book of Mormon names are widespread, both for places and persons. The State has towns named Deseret, Lehi, Manti, Moroni, and Nephi; Lehi, Moroni, and Nephi are still current as names of individuals, though now more rarely seen. Frequently occurring first names of historical significance are Orson, Heber, Parley, and Hyrum, though there are few Brighams in these latter years. Names of Biblical flavor are probably more numerous in Utah than anywhere outside tradition-bound New England, while Ute and Paiute place names also add their own distinctive flavor to the State.

    Mormon Church conferences, the annual meeting in the spring, and the semi-annual conference in the fall, bring thousands of people from all over the State, and from many adjoining States, into Salt Lake City. The annual conference, normally including April 6, is, sartorially and socially, the Mormon Easter. There are more flower-trimmed hats, more pastel topcoats, at conference time than on Easter proper—and it nearly always rains. Conference weather is proverbial. In the 67-year period from 1874 to 1940, only once, 1916-1918, was there a period of successive conference weeks free of measurable precipitation, the average precipitation being about half an inch, although in 1929 there fell 15.4 inches of snow. In a desert State, conference rains are put up with gladly.

    In Utahns there is universally a consciousness of the earth, in part because of the recency of its pioneering, but principally because Utah is an uncertainly subdued land, instinct with hardship. A Utahn who goes to New England or to Oregon looks at the broad rivers almost bitterly. It is unnatural that rivers should waste into the sea, just as it is unnatural that farmers should mature crops by rain alone. Rivers should be dammed at canyon mouths and their waters carried in canals to the thirsting land. Water in Utah is precious, savored as champagne might be in another land. Life does not come easy. Perhaps some of the especial flavor of Utah comes from this quality of things coming hard. Its beauty is not wholehearted; always there is something withheld. Utah’s loveliness is a desert loveliness, unyielding and frequently sterile; its one sea, Great Salt Lake, is lethal and worthless. This kind of country does not appeal to everyone; some have fled it in hatred. Yet many Utahns have not really loved the land of their nativity until they have ventured into more prodigal areas, into the lush green Northwest, the fertile Middle West, or the granite-ribbed East.

    The State is immense and varied, almost beyond belief. The band of irrigated green, west of the Wasatch Mountains, extends from north central Utah southward, curving gently west to a corner with Arizona and Nevada. West of this band is the gray-green Great Salt Lake, gray desert, and peaked mountains. Eastward is the red desert country of the Colorado Plateau, yellowing as it approaches the Uinta Mountains on the north, ever reddening as it extends southward and eastward to the Arizona and Colorado lines—a country of flat-topped mountains and violent color. These dessicated gray and red deserts, and these mountains, represent more than 90 per cent of Utah. The tremendous weight of the land lies upon everything. The mountains climb into the skies; the deserts ache with sheer empty immensity. Utah is many things at once: Utah is green-carpeted vales lying peacefully under the shadow of the Wasatch; Utah is a wide solitude of rolling dry valleys, with hills marching beyond hills to blue horizons; Utah is unearthly white desert; Utah is tall snow-crowned mountains; Utah is blue lakes; Utah is canyon and plateau wonderfully fragrant with pines.

    Its aspect changes with the sharp progression of the seasons. Winter is a time of hibernation. In summer much of the State is bled by the sun to an inhospitable dun and gray. But in spring the flowering desert has a surpassing loveliness, and in autumn the canyons choke with color.

    In Salt Lake City, in Ogden and Provo and Logan, the immensity of the State is circumscribed, and the world is as near as the front page of the daily newspapers. Yet the quiet hills bespeak something alien and impermanent to this urban reality of steel and stone, aspirin and cashiers’ registers. One can almost start out of a dream to see these things perished and the land returned to the hills—green-gray with sage or tawny with dry June grass under the blue-drifting smoke of Indian campfires. Out in the desert the world changes; sheep and cattle graze in a land out of time and space, and even the radio in the sheepherder’s wagon does not convince one that cities can exist in a world where the sun shines so brilliantly in the deep blue sky while the warm wind rustles in the sage.

    In the red deserts are Utah’s scenic and scientific marvels, its dinosaur bones, its cliff-dwellings, its multicolored canyons, its Indians, more natural arches and bridges than anybody knows—two more were discovered in 1940—its cow-country frontier, its vast tracts of unmapped, unexplored country. Cárdenas discovered the canyon of the Colorado, but his reports use no single adjective of color. Mormon pioneers, cowboys, and sheepherders have looked upon marvels of natural color to see them as piles of rocks that couldn’t sprout a kernel or feed a beast. Utah has been, historically, a detoured country; the Oregon Trail went north of it, other cross-country travel south of it. Utah’s deserts wait still, wrapped in multicolored serenity, for their full measure of appreciation.

    It is fitting that the worthless dry deserts nevertheless should begin, profitably for Utah, to instill in popular consciousness some other definition of the State than Mormonism, for the richer land has been pressed almost to its uttermost by the Mormon struggle with the earth. Mormon enterprise was a powerful force that wrought greatly with a hostile environment; but Utah today is supported by its mines and its livestock far more importantly than by its farms, despite the national reputation of its celery and its fruit, and despite its alfalfa, wheat, sugar beets, and garden vegetables. The fertility of the land has been outstripped by the fertility of the people. The sons and daughters born so strangely stalwart from the loins of Eastern and European converts who left urban homes to wrestle with unfamiliar Utah deserts, today are migrating from the State, bringing their strength, their vigor, and their eager ambition to the great cities of either coast. They go like a lifeblood, from wounds that Utah hopes one day to close.

    Natural Setting

    WEST of the Rockies, midway between Canada and Mexico, lies the State of Utah, a broad rectangular area from which a smaller rectangle in the northeastern corner has been cut away. The southeastern corner, where Utah, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico meet, is the only point in the United States at which four State boundaries are adjoined. Within an area of 84,990 square miles, 2,806 of which are water surface, Utah presents an irregular and diversified topography. Lofty mountains roll northward and eastward into Idaho, Wyoming, and Colorado; wide undulating plateaus sweep southward into Arizona; and vast unpeopled deserts of salt and alkali stretch westward across the Nevada line.

    The Wasatch Mountains and continuing highlands extend north and south across the center of the State, dividing it roughly into two approximately equal sections. The loftiest summit in the Wasatch, Mount Timpanogos near Provo, reaches an elevation of 12,008 feet. Several other peaks in the vicinity have an altitude of more than 11,000 feet. The Wasatch Range terminates near central Utah, but the Sanpitch, Pahvant, and Tushar plateaus continue southward and merge at length into a broken table-land, which extends across the Arizona line. The Henry, La Sal, and Abajo mountains rise out of the southern plateau. In the Tushar Plateau near Beaver there are three 12,000-foot lava peaks. Extending eastward from the Wasatch Range, and covering most of northeastern Utah, are the Uinta Mountains, where Kings Peak, the highest point in the State, towers to an elevation of 13,498 feet. South of the Uinta Range is the Uintah Basin, an east-west valley bordered by sloping mesa lands.

    Southeastern Utah is an immense broken plateau extending in a triangular form over nearly one-third of the State’s surface. Most of this region is too rugged for agricultural use, and only a small part has enduring settlements. The Deseret News for September 11, 1861, describes the territory adjacent to the Green River as one vast ‘contiguity of waste’ and measureably valuless, excepting for nomadic purposes, hunting grounds for Indians, and to hold the world together. Nevertheless, southeastern Utah is not completely valueless, for its streams have cut gorges hundreds of feet deep in the sandstone highlands, and the forces of erosion have strewn the plateaus with startling and fantastic geological formations. Certain groups of these natural marvels have become points of scenic interest, among them Capitol Reef, Arches, Natural Bridges, and Rainbow Bridge National Monuments.

    The plateau region of south central Utah, near the Arizona line, is also replete with natural wonders, including Zion and Bryce Canyon National Parks, and Cedar Breaks National Monument. In Zion Canyon massive 3,000-foot cliffs rise perpendicularly on either side of the Virgin River. The Kolob Canyons of Zion National Monument are eight ravines cut into the plateaus north and west of Zion Park by tributaries of the same stream.

    The Great Basin, which includes all of western Utah, is a huge depression enclosed by highlands and having no outlet to the sea. The western part of the Basin is characterized by arid valleys, extensive salt flats, and forbidding wastelands. In this region scattered mountain ranges rise like islands out of the flat, gray monotony of the surrounding country, and near the Nevada line a large area is included in the Great Salt Lake Desert. Depressions in the Basin are occupied by Utah Lake on the south and Great Salt Lake on the north. The former is the largest body of fresh water in the State, and the latter is the largest salt water body in the Western Hemisphere. Great Salt Lake is approximately 75 miles long and 50 miles wide. It has no outlet, but Utah Lake empties into Great Salt Lake by way of the Jordan River.

    Utah drainage areas may be divided into three sections. The northwestern corner of the State drains through the Raft River country into the Snake River. The remaining drainage is divided between the Great Basin and the Colorado River system. Large areas in eastern Utah, together with most of the southern plateaus, drain through the Green River and other tributaries into the Colorado. Largest of these tributaries are the Fremont, San Juan, and Virgin rivers. Some streams, however, flow from eastern Utah or from the plateaus into the Great Basin. The most important stream flowing through the northeastern part of the State is Bear River, which originates on the north slope of the Uinta Mountains in Utah, flows across a corner of Wyoming, back into Utah, then loops into Wyoming and Idaho before discharging its waters into Great Salt Lake. Many streams cut through the Wasatch Mountains to find their way into Utah Lake or Great Salt Lake. Among these are the Weber, Ogden, Provo, and Spanish Fork rivers. The Sevier River flows out of the Panguitch Plateau, and disappears into the Sevier Desert, and the few small streams rising in the western ranges run dry before they have progressed far across the floor of the Great Basin.

    An average elevation of approximately one mile above sea level is the principal factor in determining Utah’s temperate climate. The Santa Clara Valley and the Virgin River Valley, with an elevation of 2,700 feet, are known as Utah’s Dixie. Their winters are comparatively free from storm, and they have a semi-tropical climate and a warm dry atmosphere. In mountainous regions of the State the temperature is low in the winter and moderate in the summer. In the higher reaches of the Wasatch and Uinta mountains, particularly, the summers are short and the winters cold and long. The lowlands adjacent to the mountains have a pleasant temperate climate, with only a few extremely hot or cold days. Temperatures in Salt Lake City occasionally reach 100 degrees in midsummer and sometimes fall to 10 degrees below zero in winter.

    Precipitation also is largely determined by the altitude. The high mountain ranges receive as much as forty inches per year, most of which comes in the form of snow; the valleys near the mountains receive about fifteen inches; and the desert regions are fortunate if they get as much as five inches. The Wasatch Mountains are responsible for much of the precipitation on the arable land of the State. Rain-bearing clouds from the Pacific Ocean cross the hot deserts of the Great Basin, and when they strike the cool mountain air, rain or snow falls upon the western slopes of the Wasatch Range. Because of the precipitation in this section, a great agricultural belt paralleling the mountains has been developed.

    GEOLOGY

    The man-made history of Utah is but a letter in the latest syllable of recorded time. The geologic history of Utah is a story of mighty rivers and deserts and mountains, of simple protoplasmic things in the dark ooze of ancient seas, and of their struggle through millions of years toward consciousness and light. The geologist has divided the story of the earth into five great chapters, and every chapter can be read in the rock formations of Utah. Some pages are missing, some crumpled and torn; some words are blotted, some meanings obscure, but on the whole the record is well preserved.

    Scientists, through their study of the decomposition of radioactive minerals, calculate that the Archeozoic rocks, the most ancient formations in the world, are one billion, eight hundred fifty million years old. Archeozoic rocks, exposed by folding and faulting in the Wasatch Mountains, show no fossil trace of life. If life existed in Archeozoic time, the tremendous pressure of accumulating sediments has long ago obliterated its faintest impression.

    During Proterozoic time (the second chapter) water covered the greater part of eastern Utah, and the first one-celled life forms that have been definitely recognized made their appearance. Proterozoic rocks are exposed in several places throughout the State—notably in the vicinity of Big Cottonwood Canyon, east of Salt Lake City, and in the desert ranges of the Great Basin, where faulting and erosion have stripped away the younger sediments.

    Seas of the Paleozoic era advanced into Utah and retreated again many times, and each advancing sea brought with it strange new forms of life. At the beginning of the Paleozoic time the little crab-like trilobite, seldom more than three inches long, was the king of beasts. As the era lengthened into millions of years, gastropods, brachiopods, cephalopods, horn corals, and even higher types of fish appeared. Huge ferns and dense forest growths lined the waterways, and sprawling vertebrates swam in the oceans and crawled awkwardly on the shores. Exposure of Paleozoic rocks is widespread throughout Utah—particularly in the Wasatch, in the Uintas, in the basin ranges, and in the high plateaus of the south. Although vertebrate fossils of the Paleozoic era are comparatively rare in the State, there is an abundance of invertebrate forms. Fossilized trilobites may be found by the thousands near Antelope Springs west of Delta. Protruding from the canyon walls, or lying in the slide-rock of the Wasatch Range, there are many fossilized specimens of corals, sea lilies, snails, clams, mussels, and similar forms. Fossil shellfish are also numerous in the Uinta Mountains, in various parts of the Great Basin, and in south central Utah.

    The major part of the Great Basin was above water in Mesozoic time, and the eroded sediments were carried east and south into what is now the plateau region. Mesozoic rocks, therefore, are confined largely to the eastern and southern parts of the State; buried within them is fossil evidence of the slow progression of life. In Mesozoic waters the shellfish continued to evolve; on Mesozoic landscapes lived the first dinosaurs, birds, and mammals, and the first hardwood trees. During this period in geologic history, large areas in northern Arizona and southern Utah were covered by flood plains upon which meandering rivers and streams left stranded a great number of logs. Later deposition covered them with mud and sand, and waters bearing silica, manganese, and iron filtered through the ancient flood plains and replaced the vegetable material of the tree trunks with stone. At Capitol Reef National Monument, Zion National Park, and near Escalante, Kanab, and St. George there is petrified wood estimated to be more than a hundred million years old.

    Excavations in the Uintah Basin near Jensen since 1909 have uncovered a veritable graveyard of dinosaur bones, and the site has been set aside as a national monument. In this region long ago was a flood plain across which streams meandered. Upon the banks of these rivers and in the surrounding marshes the great reptiles lived. Some of them, preying upon smaller dinosaurs, became masters of their primitive world; others, feeding upon water plants, attained a length of a hundred feet and a weight of thirty-five or forty tons. When these mighty reptiles died, their carcasses were borne away by floods and deposited on a bar, where the drifting sediments, covering them hardened into stone. The Jensen quarry (see Dinosaur National Monument) has yielded hundreds of dinosaur bones. Among them are the back and leg bones of the herbivorous brontosaurus and diplodocus; the bones of a flesh-eating allosaurus; and the complete skeleton of an immense brontosaurus, a hundred feet long and twenty feet high.

    Long after the dinosaurs were buried on the old river bar, masses of vegetable material accumulating on the margin of shallow seas were covered with sand and finally transformed by pressure into the extensive coal deposits of Carbon and Emery counties. Although no dinosaur bones have been found in this region, the sandstone above the coal beds still records the fact that no less than eight varieties of dinosaurs walked across the mud flats more than sixty million years ago. One huge beast left footprints which indicate that he took fifteen-foot strides, and another, apparently because he slipped in peaty mud, made an impression approximately four and a half feet long and two and a half feet across (see Tour 7a).

    While the great reptiles were still living in some parts of the world, the region now known as Zion National Park was an arid waste or fossil Sahara. There, sediments washed down from the mountains were blown by the wind into huge sand dunes. At the same time the desert plain was sinking gradually toward the bottom of a sea. After a long period, in which layers of limestone and shales were deposited above the sand, the area of deposition was again lifted above the water. Streams grinding down through the bedrock finally exposed the vermilion and white sandstones of Zion Canyon. The sandstone was laid down in the Mesozoic era; uplift and erosion, however, were products of a later time.

    During the last period in the Mesozoic era the sea extended from the Gulf of Mexico to Alaska and from Ohio to central Utah. By the end of that period the sea had withdrawn, and lateral pressure from the west was folding the earth’s crust into a system of mountains known as the ancestral Rockies. In following ages the pounding wind and rain and the abrasive action of streams reduced the ancestral mountains to a plain. By the middle of Cenozoic time the Cascade disturbance began, and vertical pressure under the present Rocky Mountain province resulted in elevation of the land and the consequent breaking and faulting of massive blocks of earth. The Cascade disturbance, together with the erosion that followed the lifting of land masses, created the Great Basin and the Rocky Mountain system, to which the Wasatch Range in Utah belongs.

    The Wasatch Mountains extend from Collinston on the north to Nephi on the south, a distance of 150 miles. The Wasatch fault borders the west face of the range. North of Salt Lake City the fault scarp has been uncovered by the removal of sediments of comparatively late origin. In some places there are indications of recent movement on the fault; moreover, at some time within the past 500 years there has been a single abrupt movement of about sixty feet. The resultant earthquake must have been more severe than any recorded in historic time. Scattered along the entire length of the fault are warm mineral springs that bubble up to form steaming surface pools.

    The latest chapter in the history of the earth began sixty million years ago with the advent of Cenozoic time. The Cenozoic era saw the development of mammals and higher plants, and, much later, the first appearance of man. In Utah, rock formations of this age are represented in the fresh-water deposits of Bryce Canyon and Cedar Breaks, in the sediments of streams and lakes, in the Wasatch conglomerate, in glacial debris, and in numerous lava flows.

    In early Cenozoic time there were violent volcanic eruptions, resulting in deposition just north of the Salt Lake City boundary, near the State Capitol. About the same time there were intrusions of molten material in Big Cottonwood Canyon and near Park City, Bingham, and Alta. These masses cooled, and their mineral-bearing solutions formed valuable ore deposits. Numerous cinder cones preserve the record of volcanic activity near Zion and Bryce canyons. Lava beds, comparatively new in geologic history, cover portions of southern Utah, and there are several extinct volcanoes in this region. Outstanding among these is a crater twelve miles west of Fillmore (see Tour 1e) and several perfect volcanic cones with lava flows extending from them.

    The long period of intermittent disturbances which marked the upper Cenozoic era determined many of the present topographic features of Utah. In what is now the Great Basin, block faulting gave rise to a series of north-south ranges; in northeastern Utah a single great fold already in existence was cut off by faulting to produce the Uinta Mountains. In the south, igneous intrusions lifted the strata into domes, and erosion weathered away the overlying rocks to develop the Henry and La Sal ranges.

    Among the geologic phenomena of late Cenozoic times in the Great Basin, perhaps most interesting to the layman is the evidence that an ancient lake once covered the greater part of Utah and extended into Idaho and Nevada. This huge body of water, known to geologists as Lake Bonneville, is thought to have originated during the last ice age, more than fifty thousand years ago, and to have endured for about twenty-five thousand years. At its maximum the lake was 1,050 feet deep, 145 miles wide, and 346 miles long. Rolling hills, abrupt cliffs, and water-filled canyons formed an irregular shore line, and low mountains rising above the water studded the surface with islands. Contemporaneous with Lake Bonneville were more than seventy smaller lakes, which occupied minor depressions in the Great Basin.

    Pre-Bonneville time was characterized by alternating lakes and deserts. The lake which immediately preceded Bonneville was probably little more than a brine pond in the midst of a vast wasteland. With the beginning of Bonneville time, however, the climate began to change. Cold wet years were more frequent, and evaporation was reduced. The level of the lake rose with the wet years, and though intermittent periods of drought prevented a constant rise, the trend was always upward. Approximately 1,000 feet above the present surface of Great Salt Lake the waters came to a halt and for a long time remained stationary. Pounding incessantly against their enclosing shores, the waves eventually carved out a shelf, in some places 1,500 feet wide. This shelf, known as the Bonneville Terrace, is today plainly visible on the north face of the Traverse Mountain about 18 miles south of Salt Lake City. It appears also on the north slope of the Oquirrh Range not far from Saltair, on Antelope Island, and on the mountains near Wendover.

    The lake remained at the Bonneville level for a long time. Then, continuing its upward movement, the water reached Red Rock Pass in northern Cache Valley, and, through this lowest point in the rim of the basin, overflowed into the Snake and Columbia river systems. The Red Rock outlet carried the water through a loose gravel formation which was cut away so rapidly that within a comparatively few years the lake dropped 375 feet. When the outflowing water encountered a resistant limestone at the base of the gravel, the lake level again became constant and remained so until the Provo, largest of all Lake Bonneville terraces, was formed. Near Salt Lake City the Provo terrace appears at the foot of Ensign Peak and at Fort Douglas. Recognizable also in many other parts of the Great Basin, it stands in bold relief on the west side of the Wasatch and Oquirrh Mountains.

    At the end of the Provo epoch the lake again resumed its downward course. After forming several intermediate terraces, the water dropped to a point approximately 300 feet above the present level of Great Salt Lake. Here for perhaps more than 1,000 years the waves ate into the jagged shoreline until they had produced the Stansbury Terrace, third in size and importance. In many places the record of the lake at the Stansbury level has been destroyed by erosion, but the terrace may still be seen from the Salt Lake-Ogden highway between the Municipal Baths and Becks Hot Springs (see Tour 1c). Between the Stansbury level and that of Great Salt Lake the waters of Bonneville left a great many small terraces, many of which appear today on the mountains at the north end of the present lake. More than fifty terraces, each recording a stage in the history of Lake Bonneville, have been recognized at various places within the Great Basin.

    During the rise and fall of the ancient lake, streams flowing out of the mountains built deltas at the mouths of canyons. Many such deltas were formed while the lake stood at the Bonneville level, but nearly all of them were washed away and their sands and

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