Utah History Books

By: R.N. & M.L. Preston The overlay, that is used over the map of UTAH 1900, (maps 3,4,5 and 6) has been reproduced from a modern map. The purpose is to show the changes in the state over a period...

North of Price, Utah, Nine Mile Canyon slashes through the West Tavaputs Plateau and erodes its way east to the Green River, Utah. In 1847, settlements began in Utah along the Wasatch Front. The rangeland was soon taken, and stockmen...

By: Stewart Aitchison In 1879, 230 settlers in southwestern Utah heeded the call from leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints to pull up stakes and move to the distant Sand Juan River country of southeastern Utah....

With an estimated 10,000 ancient rock art sites, Nine Mile Canyon has long captivated people the world over. The 45-mile-long canyon, dubbed the “World’s Longest Art Gallery,” hosts what is believed to be the largest concentration of rock art in...

Nine Mile Canyon is famous the world over for its prehistoric art images and remnants of ancient Fremont farmers. But it also teems with Old West history that is salted with iconic figures of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Last...

By: Michael O'Reilly In 1855, Caleb Rhoades accompanied Ute Indians to a sacred burial site in the Uinta Mountains - and there beheld a cave full of gold artifacts. Montezuma's treasure? Or relics made by the ancient Lamanites from the...

Copublished with the Tanner Trust Fund, J. Willard Marriott Library.Robert Smithson’s earthwork, Spiral Jetty (1970), an icon of the Land Art movement of the 1960s and 1970s, is located on the northern shores of Utah’s Great Salt Lake. Smithson built...

By: Dale L. Morgan The Great Salt Lake is a remarkable book, written by a remarkable man. After the passage of nearly a half-century, it remains one of the most informative and readable general histories of Utah yet written; a...

The Salt Lake City Cemetery was established in September 1847 when George Wallace, who arrived with the first company of Mormon pioneers two months prior, buried his young daughter on a picturesque hillside above the Salt Lake Valley. It has...

Utah's Mormon Pioneer National Heritage Area offers breathtaking natural resources, powerful historical drama and intriguing cultural traditions. This rich legacy is built on old-world values of cooperation, industry, ingenuity and true grit--as well as a miracle or two. From frontier...

In the 1840s, land west of the Missouri River was a new frontier for courage, adventure, freedom and true grit. During this era and the decades that followed, Utah became the focal point for many brave settlers yearning for a...

By: Harold Schindler One of the old West's most intriguing and mythic figures, Orrin Porter Rockwell stirs strong emotion even today. Saint or cold-blooded killer - the evidence is in your hands. Other Information: Published: 1993 Pages: 417

Between 1890 and 1930, Salt Lake City experienced some of the most rapid and profound changes of any city in U.S. history. In its pioneer period, from the beginning of white settlement in 1847 to about 1890, the city struggled...

“John Wesley Powell: explorer, writer, geologist, anthropologist, land planner, bureaucrat. Which one do we focus on?” This is the question author James M. Aton poses at the beginning of his biography of Powell, though he soon decides that it is...

This well-researched biography of the life and controversial death of Robert LeRoy Parker, a.k.a. Butch Cassidy, is a journey across the late-nineteenth-century American West as we follow Cassidy's exploits in Colorado, Wyoming, and Utah, where he made his name as...

By Dalton Gackle Settled by miners and Mormons after the Civil War and incorporated in 1884, Park City grew into one of the world’s most prestigious mining camps. Known primarily for its richness in silver, Park City miners also extracted...

By: Charles L. KellerWhen the first company of Mormon settlers arrived in the Great Salt Lake Valley in July 1847, it was immediately apparent that their survival depended upon what resources they found in the mountains surrounding them. The Great...

By: Michael Rutter Massacres, mayhem, and mischief fill the pages of Outlaw Tales of Utah. Meet the Wild Bunch, outlaws who sought refuge between heists hanging out and hiding out in Utah. Butch Cassidy, its leader, once paid a farmer's...

By: SueAnn Martell and the Western Mining and Railroad Museum In 1880, the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad was hard-pressed to find a suitable rail route from Grand Junction to Salt Lake City. With the coal deposits of eastern Utah...

Copublished with the Utah State Historical Society. Affiliated with the Utah Division of State History, Utah Department of Heritage & Arts.In time for the centennial of the United States’s entry into World War I, this collection of seventeen essays explores...

Salt Lake City’s oldest residential historic district is a neighborhood known as the Avenues. During the late nineteenth century this area was home to many of the most influential citizens of Salt Lake City. Built from 1860 until 1930, it...