Author Archive
April Announcement for the Utah Westerners
“A Real Rest in the Rugged West”
Susan Rugh and Lisa Michele Church
What do John Wayne, author Vladimir Nabokov, and photographer Dorothea Lange have in common? Each one stayed in a Utah motel. In 1953 Utah native DeVoto reported in his Easy Chair column on a newly popular form of lodging growing up all over the West—the motel. Motels and “motel towns” sprouted like mushrooms along the highways of the West. Utah was in the forefront of motel mania.
Join us for this offbeat trip along Utah’s highways and byways to remember Utah’s motels, from Moab’s Apache and Atomic to Salt Lake City’s Spiking Inn. Learn how St. George led with cabin camps, courts, and the state’s first motel pools. Explore ranch-style architecture and neon waving cowboys that made Utah motels ruggedly western. Discover the quirky motel names that enticed travelers to turn in. Marvel at the space-age signage of modern motels. Be amazed at the palatial motor inns of our capital city that were paved over for parking lots (cue Joni Mitchell here). We will talk about the appeal of motels, the romance of the road, and the hard truths of a dying family business. Wear your sunglasses and bring your road maps for this journey back to the motels of yesteryear.
Susan Sessions Rugh is Professor of History at Brigham Young University and author of Are We There Yet? The Golden Age of the American Family Vacation (2008). Lisa Michele Church is a lawyer by profession, and has a distinguished career in public service. Her articles, “Early Roadside Motels and Motor Courts of St. George” and “St. George: Early Years of Tourism” appeared in the Utah Historical Quarterly in 2012. Rugh and Church are writing a book on Utah motels and have previously presented at Utah State History, Mormon History Association, and Utah Heritage Foundation conferences.
March Announcement for the Utah Westerners
The Council of Fifty in Western History
Jedediah Rogers
In 1844, Joseph Smith established what John D. Lee later alluded to as “the Municipal department of the Kingdom of God set up on the Earth, and from which all Law eminates,” responsible “to council, deliberate & plan for the general good & upbuilding of the Kingdom of God on the Earth.” For whatever otherworldly and millennial aspirations Smith may have had for this body, the Council of Fifty solidly operated in the temporal sphere, and in fact occupies a significant place in Utah and western American history for its role in the Mormon migration west, the Euro settlement of the Great Basin, and political maneuverings for a Mormon state.
Smith and his successors had expansive ideas about perhaps breaking free of the United States in Oregon or Texas, but their aspirations would butt against the realities of survival within the realm of U.S. geopolitical influence. From late 1848 to mid-1850, the Council of Fifty was the governing body in what would become Utah Territory, passing laws and statutes, acting as the judicial authority, and overseeing the growth of Salt Lake City. It was also central to the failed attempt to establish the State of Deseret. This presentation will offer a new look at an old topic: the early perceptions, exploration, and settlement of Salt Lake Valley and the West and the ensuing social and environmental transformation. Rogers will examine the physical and spiritual geography of the Great Basin through the journals and records of council members and place the council in its larger western and historiographical context.
Rogers earned his doctorate in American history from Arizona State University. He is a Senior State Historian at the Utah Division of State History and co-managing editor of the Utah Historical Quarterly. His book Roads in the Wilderness: Conflict in Canyon Country won the 2012 Wallace Stegner Prize from the University of Utah Press. He is editor of In the President’s Office: The Diaries of L. John Nuttall, 1879-1892 and, most recently, The Council of Fifty: A Documentary History, both published by Signature Books.
February Announcement for the Utah Westerners
BRIGHAM’S BASTION
PIPE SPRINGS AND ITS PLACE ON THE MORMON FRONTIER
JOHN A. PETERSON
In the spring of 1870 Congress nearly passed the Cullom Anti-Polygamy Bill which would have authorized President Ulysses S. Grant to send up to 40,000 troops to Utah in what would have been a much larger version of the “Utah Expedition” that precipitated “the Utah War” of 1857-58. Planning for just such a possibility, for over a decade Brigham Young had been designing a massive battlefield in the broken desert landscape of southern Utah. It ranged from the Rim of the Great Basin to the Grand Canyon. “If you want to know why we want to Settle this Southern Country,” he had told the St. George Saints in 1869, “one reason is this: If the Nation Makes war upon us we want some place to go to whare we Can have a safe place to keep our women & Children in while we have to defend our homes.” Red rock retreats like Kolob, Zion, and Snow canyons provided hideouts, while the region of Utah’s Dixie provided scores of desert battlefields advantageous to the Latter-day Saints.
As the United States War Department prepared itself to mobilize its troops against polygamy and the Mormon theocracy, Young and an armed escort journeyed from St. George to Kanab. The prophet’s purpose was to view certain strategic points of his proposed battlefield and to survey portions of a potential escape route should the coming storm require another Mormon Exodus—this one to Arizona and Mexico via an obscure crossing of the Colorado at what would soon be called Lee’s Ferry.
Young and his retinue also searched for a suitable location to build a fortified hideout just south of the Utah-Arizona border which could be used as a safe-house outside the jurisdiction of Utah’s federal officials. There, if necessary, he and other church leaders could hide should they be prosecuted for polygamy and murder. The structure could also serve as a Nauvoo Legion command center should War actually breakout between the Church and the United States. At a strategic bottleneck between the towering Vermillion Cliffs and an impenetrable tributary of the Grand Canyon, Young determined to build his stone fortress at Pipe Springs, known to be one of the few constant sources of potable water in the area. He named the fortress “Winsor Castle.” Its strong walls could also serve as protection from Paiutes and Navajos who would certainly be tempted by the church’s large herds of cattle there.
Before long, the Grant Administration sponsored an “Anti-Mormon cabal” whose alleged purpose was to provoke the Mormons to commit “rebellious acts” that would “require” the president and his War Department to capture and or/execute Brigham Young and “drive the Mormons out of Utah.” The ostensible goal was to destroy the Mormon theocracy, leaving the cabal in control of the newly discovered Utah silver mines and much more. However, before a showdown between the two forces could occur, Young fled to southern Utah “in order to protect his health.” Meanwhile, Grant contemplated sending a posse, troops, or both, after “the fugitive.” John Peterson will discuss the whole affair, its resolution, and consequences, focusing especially on the role Pipe Springs played in it.
John A. Peterson received a PhD in history from Arizona State University. He has taught in the Seminary and Institute program of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for 35 years. He is the author of the highly regarded book, Utah’s Black Hawk War, published in 1998 by the University of Utah Press, which received the Mormon History Association’s Best First Book Award in 1999. Kirkus Reviews assessed the book as “a first-rate investigation into a little-known episode of the Indian Wars,” adding that the book is “accessible to—and highly recommended for—all readers with an interest in western history.” Peterson recently completed a comprehensive history of Pipe Springs, a work commissioned and sponsored by the National Park Service.
January Announcement for the Utah Westerners
“WOODEN BEDS FOR WOODEN HEADS”
TIE CUTTING IN THE NORTH SLOPE OF THE UINTA MOUNTAINS (1867-1938)
CHRISTOPHER W. MERRITT
Between 1867 and 1938, thousands of men and women from around the world worked in the Uinta Mountains cutting ties for the growing transcontinental railroad system. These hardy individuals have left behind an indelible mark upon the landscape of the Uintas, which is being uncovered through history and archaeology. Over two hundred cabin sites have been documented by archaeologists, and these buildings, associated artifacts, and even location on the landscapes tell the important contribution of loggers and the North Slope of the Uintas played in the development of the western railroad system. With little written record remaining of these itinerant works, archaeology is providing that important voice to the past. Christopher W. Merritt, Deputy State Historic Preservation Officer in the Utah Division of State History, will discuss this little-known, but fascinating area of Utah history.
Christopher Merritt received his doctorate from the University of Montana in Anthropology after spending four years studying the history and archaeology of the Overseas Chinese experience in Montana. He also received an MS from Michigan Technological University in Industrial Archaeology, where he employed scientific materials testing to determine the origin and distribution of locally made Mormon ceramics in Utah and Nevada. Merritt has led excavations in several states, including Utah. Among other activities, he was involved in the archaeological work on the remains of a Mormon pottery shop near downtown Salt Lake City and spent two years in field expeditions at the Rosebud Battlefield in Montana. Merritt has worked for the U. S. Forest Service, in private archaeological contracting, and most recently as an archaeologist for the Utah Division of State History. He also teaches courses in anthropology and archaeology at both Weber State University and Salt Lake Community College.
December Announcement for the Utah Westerners
UTAH CARTOONING MADE EASY
PAT BAGLEY
Over the 37 years that award-winning political cartoonist, Pat Bagley, has been doing cartoons about the Beehive State, one thing he has never worried about: running out of material. From the MX Missile fight to Mormon polygamists marrying underage girls, Utah always promises to provide fodder for satire. After all, Pat Bagley works for the Salt Lake Tribune, a newspaper that, apart from having web sections labeled “Local News,” “National News,” and “Opinion,” also has an online pull down tab for “Polygamy.”
Bagley has drawn more than 12,000 cartoons at the Tribune and the history and heritage of Utah have figured prominently in them. From the story of the Crickets and the Gulls, he has adopted the seagull as a recurring character. Iconic images such as bees, the beehive, the statue of Moroni, handcarts, This is the Place, and the Salt Lake Temple itself, have been used as symbolic shortcuts to illustrate screwy Utah politics.
Each day, Bagley looks forward to opening the paper and seeing what stranger-than-fiction item this wonderful state has served up for him. He will share some of his many cartoon highlights and anecdotes gleaned from his nearly 40 years as a witty yet insightful, sometimes hard-hitting, and brilliant political cartoonist.
Pat Bagley was born in Salt Lake City, but raised in southern California. Always interested in politics, Bagley went on to receive a degree in political science with a history minor at Brigham Young University. While still a student at BYU, Bagley doodled a political cartoon which he submitted to the student newspaper, The Daily Universe. Not only was it published there, it was reprinted in Time Magazine weeks later. He went on to become the editorial cartoonist at the Salt Lake Tribune, but his cartoons have appeared in many prestigious periodicals such as The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, and The Los Angeles Times. He is syndicated in hundreds of American newspapers.
Bagley has also written and/or illustrated many books on political, social, and religious satire, children’s books, and history. Some even satirized George Bush and his administration (one being Clueless George Goes to War!) and the 2008 election (Fist Bump Heard ‘Round the World). Others poked fun at Utah and Mormon culture such as Treasures of Half-Truth; Oh, My Heck: A Pretty, Great Cartoon Book; The Best of Bagley: 20 Years of Cartoons from the Salt Lake Tribune; and Bagley’s Utah Survival Guide. He has also partnered with the Tribune’s Robert Kirby in books of humor, among them Pat & Kirby Go to Hell and Wake Me for the Resurrection.
Pat Bagley has won numerous awards for his work, including the Herblock Prize for best national cartoonist (2009) and Best of the West (best editorial cartoons, 2012). He was the first cartoonist to win the Wilbur Award for Religious Communication in 1991, given for “outstanding communication of religious values in the news and entertainment media.” Bagley was also a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2013.
November Announcement for the Utah Westerners
HOLE IN THE ROCK
EXPERIENCES ON THE TRAIL
OSCAR OLSON
Oscar Olson’s passion for southern Utah and its history began with a float trip down the Glen Canyon in 1962 before Lake Powell was formed. He saw firsthand where John Wesley Powell and his men journeyed down the Colorado, the Dominguez-Escalante Trail, where miners had worked, and the Hole-in-the-Rock Trail. Thus began his lifetime of exploring the many trails and running the rivers of southern Utah.
In late 1879, 250 Mormon men, women, and children in over 80 wagons, along with 1000 head of cattle, began one of the most grueling and astonishing treks in western history. They were answering a call by their leaders to colonize the southeastern part of the territory. Six months later, after suffering great privations under tremendously difficult circumstances, they had crossed and explored some of the most rugged terrain in North America and had constructed a trail that shortened travel distances over other routes by hundreds of miles.
Oscar Olson has explored probably 98% of the Hole-in-the-Rock Trail by boat, air, and foot. He has read almost everything written on the subject and has become an expert on the history of the expedition and the trail–he knows the trail as well as anyone alive today. Oscar will share with us not only this fascinating aspect of Utah history, but also his own experiences on the trail and what he has learned by exploring and reading.
Because of his passion for western and trail history, over the years Oscar has joined and participated actively (often in leadership roles) in several organizations such as OCTA, the Lincoln Highway Association, Old Spanish Trails Association (OSTA), Utah Rock Art Research Association (URARA), and the Utah Westerners. For many years he drove a bus for Greyhound and other companies and traveled over 4,000,000 miles in all 48 contiguous states in the USA and 19 Mexican states. Oscar says that he didn’t find the job as much as it found him because of his wanderlust and that “it’s been a good ride.” He was the driver on the first three Utah Westerners field trips in the 1960s and has been on 29 of the field trips, probably half of them as the driver. He has spent virtually his entire lifetime reading about and exploring the American West. In what promises to be an engrossing evening, fellow-Utah Westerner, Oscar Olson, will share a portion of what he has learned.
October Announcement for the Utah Westerners
ROBERT NEWTON BASKIN
“A MOST CRUEL AND UNRELENTING ENEMY!”
OR
“THE FATHER OF MODERN UTAH!”
WHICH WAS HE?
JOHN GARY MAXWELL
One of the most controversial, yet overlooked, figures in Utah’s long-lasting Mormon and non-Mormon conflict is also one of the least recognized and remembered. Robert Newton Baskin came from southern Ohio, arriving in Utah in mid-summer 1865, to all appearances seeking success in a law practice and wealth from the minerals in the Wasatch Mountains. It was years before the dark cloud of his killing a man in self defense came to public knowledge. It would turn out that complexity and contradictions would characterize his life in Utah.
He carried life-long guilt when his advice to a former army surgeon, Dr. John King Robinson, to press his case in Utah’s court resulted in the doctor’s brutal assassination on the city street. He served as the prosecuting attorney, when in 1875, the court in Beaver heard the case of John D. Lee for murders committed eighteen years earlier at Mountain Meadows.
Baskin repeatedly pressed for legislation, writing many of the twenty-five bills designed to end polygamy and undemocratic features of theocratic rule in Utah. As Salt Lake City’s second non-Mormon mayor he pushed for modernization of the city’s infrastructure. He was the force behind the building of the City and County Building on Washington Square as an architectural rival to the Salt Lake Temple. He was also instrumental in pushing the first legislation funding public education in Utah.
Robert Baskin battled with Utah’s incumbent member of Congress, George Q. Cannon, and twice ran against him. He was behind the Edmunds and Edmunds-Tucker Acts that dismantled the financial structure of LDS Church, and also authored the Cullom-Struble Bill whose pending passage helped bring about the Wilford Woodruff 1890 manifesto, presumably ending polygamy. In 1914, Baskin’s inflammatory, but well-documented, book, Reminiscences of Early Utah, was published. In it, he decried what he viewed as the excesses of a Mormon theocracy and roundly condemned its leaders, especially Brigham Young.
As Utah’s Supreme Court Justice he ended his public service, claiming high regard for the Mormon people. Was he the implacable enemy or was he largely responsible for the republican form of government under which Utah blossomed and for the changes in the LDS Church whose size and influence has grown immensely?
Fellow Utah Westerner, Gary Maxwell, will discuss these and other questions and tell us about one of the most fascinating and controversial characters in Utah history.
John Gary Maxwell received his M.D. from the University of Utah in the 1950s and went on to a long, distinguished career in medicine as a surgeon, professor, administrator, adviser, and leader, attaining numerous positions of responsibility and distinction. He is a member of several professional societies in the field of medicine, but also other groups such as the Western History Association, Mormon History Association, OCTA, and the Utah State Historical Society. Not only is he is the author of scores of medical publications, but he has also written books on Western history, including Gettysburg to Great Salt Lake: George R. Maxwell, Civil War Hero and Federal Marshal Among the Mormons and the one about the subject of our October meeting, Robert Newton Baskin and the Making of Modern Utah. Andy Jordan, in the Midwest Book Review, writes that the Maxwell’s book is “a seminal work of impressive detail in presenting the life and accomplishments of a key figure in . . . Utah” and says it is “highly recommended.” Gary’s forthcoming book is The Civil War in Utah. All the books are published by The Arthur H. Clark Company, an imprint of the University of Oklahoma Press.
Note: Until recently, Robert Baskin lay in an unmarked grave at Mount Olivet Cemetery in Salt Lake City. But after reading Gary Maxwell’s book about Baskin, two local men were motivated to honor and recognize Baskin and his “significant contributions” to Utah. They formed a committee to organize a gala dinner to honor Baskin on July 10, 2014, the 100th anniversary of the publication of his book, Reminiscences of Early Utah. Gary Maxwell served as an advisor to the committee. And now, the man whose many achievements went largely unheralded, until recently, has a marker for his grave.
September Announcement for the Utah Westerners
THE NORTHFIELD RAID
NEW INSIGHTS ON THE JAMES-YOUNGER GANG’S GREATEST BLUNDER
MARK LEE GARDNER
It’s the most famous bungled bank job of all time. As the notorious James-Younger gang fled Northfield, Minnesota, on the afternoon of September 7, 1876, their loot from the First National Bank totaled $26.60 in coin and scrip. They left behind $15,000 in cash in the bank’s unlocked safe and two dead comrades in the street, shot down in a firefight with the town’s plucky citizens. In two weeks, another gang member would be dead and the three Younger brothers captured. Only Frank and Jesse James would elude their pursuers and make it back to Missouri.
Historian and author Mark Lee Gardner will highlight some of the new findings in his latest book: Shot All To Hell: Jesse James, the Northfield Raid, and the Wild West’s Greatest Escape (William Morrow). Publishers Weekly calls the book “an elegant narrative that’s as entertaining as it is historically accurate . . . a must-read.” He will discuss why the James-Younger gang traveled to Minnesota and the identity of the bandit who murdered bank employee Joseph Lee Heywood, long a source of debate. Gardner has uncovered never-before-seen evidence that adds substantially to what is known about this legendary bank heist and the robber pursuit that followed, the largest manhunt in U. S. history up to that time.
A native of Missouri’s Jesse James country, Mark Lee Gardner has made Colorado his home for the last 28 years, where he lives with his wife Katie, and where their two children, Christiana and Vance, were born. Shot All to Hell won the 2014 Spur Award from the Western Writers of America for Best Western Nonfiction Historical Book and the 2014 Best Book Award from the Wild West History Association. True West magazine named Gardner “Best Author” in its annual Best of the West issue for 2014. He is also the author of the critically lauded To Hell on a Fast Horse: The Untold Story of Billy the Kid and Pat Garrett. An authority on the American West, Gardner has appeared on PBS’s American Experience and ABC’s World News, as well as on the History Channel, the Encore Westerns Channel, NPR, and BBC Radio. He has written for the Los Angeles Times, American Heritage, Wild West, American Cowboy, and New Mexico Magazine. Gardner is also an authority on the popular music of the American West and will perform two or three historic outlaw ballads at the end of his presentation.
Reading Material for the UW Field Trip to the Greasy Grass
Steve has compiled some reading material that you can view here:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/m1omwrf21assvkl/2014Book.pdf?n=146792586
this is a large pdf file, so it will take a moment to download.
July Announcement for the Utah Westerners
THE NATURE OF THE BATTLE
HOW THE ENVIRONMENT SHAPED THE COURSE
OF THE BATTLE OF THE LITTLE BIGHORN
GREGORY E. SMOAK
Few places in the American West are more iconic and contested than the rolling hills and riparian bottomlands of the Little Bighorn Valley in southeastern Montana. There in June of 1876, George A. Custer’s Seventh Cavalry suffered the United States’ most spectacular defeat of the Indian Wars at the hands of Lakota and Cheyenne warriors led by Crazy Horse, Gall, and Lame White Man. Histories of the Little Bighorn have focused most often on the decisions and actions of combatants on both sides. While few would deny the importance of these individuals, the battlefield itself was a critical, and often overlooked, part of the story.
This presentation is part of a larger environmental history of the Little Bighorn Battlefield commissioned by the National Park Service and will address the ways that understanding the human and natural forces that shaped the landscape of the battlefield can enrich the visitor’s experience at Little Bighorn. Points of discussion will include the environmental context of the Great Sioux War of 1876-1877, the radically different ecological relationships of a Plains Indian village and U. S. Army column to the land, and how the actual terrain of the battlefield impacted the conflict.
Gregory E. Smoak is Director of the American West Center and Associate Professor of History at University of Utah, where he specializes in American Indian, American Western, Environmental, and Public History. He completed an M.A. at Northern Arizona University and a Ph.D. at the University of Utah in 1999. He has taught at Colorado State University and the University of Minnesota. The University of California Press published his book Ghost Dances and Identity: American Indian Ethnicity, Racial Identity, and Prophetic Religion in 2006. He is currently working on an environmental history of Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument under a contract with the National Park service. He has served on numerous committees for professional organizations including the National Council on Public History, the Organization of American Historians, and the Western History Association.
This presentation promises to be an excellent segue into our August field trip, but will undoubtedly also be enjoyed by anyone in the Utah Westerners. Feel free to invite a guest who has any interest in the Custer battle or just western history.
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