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August Announcement for the Utah Westerners
“The Salina Utah Massacre”
Mike Rose
During World War II Utah was home to approximately 15,000 German and Italian prisoners of war distributed across the state of Utah in camps. Camp Salina was one of ten, small, temporary branch camps occupied by approximately 250 German soldiers from 1944 to 1945. Most camps were built in isolated areas, but the Salina camp was located within the small town’s borders. To compensate for the many American soldiers who were serving in the military the Germans had been placed in the town to help with the harvest. On the night of July 7, 1945 (two months after the war ended in Europe), Private Clarence V. Bertucci, open fired on the camp killing nine German prisoners of war and wounded twenty others. The event is remembered for being “the worst massacre at a POW camp in U.S. history,” and Bertucci’s eventual conviction made him one of only three American soldiers prosecuted for killing German prisoners. Rose will detail the events leading up to the tragic evening as well as the aftermath of the incident–including the fate of Private Bertucci. He will discuss life in the Salina camp, and the POW’s relationship with the Salina residents. He will also discuss what happened to some of the German survivors after they left the camp.
Mike Rose
Rose was born on the Island of Oahu, in the late1930s. On December 7, 1941 he was playing in the front yard of his family’s home when a squadron of Japanese planes flew overhead on their way to Pearl Harbor. Ten weeks later, Rose along with his mother and younger brother were evacuated to the United States on a British troop ship and six months later his father joined them. He grew up in California and after retiring from his career as a graphic designer moved to Utah eleven years ago. He researches and writes history as well as works part-time for the Jordan School District teaching and lecturing on history.
He posts a monthly historical story for a network of 200+ history enthusiasts on three continents. He was written four books including Salina Utah Massacre. He and his wife Lucy have been married for fifty-five years and have one daughter and three sons
July Announcement for the Utah Westerners
“Creating the World Class Joe Quinney Sports Center/Alf Engen Ski Museum”
Alan Engen & Greg Thompson
Please join nationally regarded ski historians Alan Engen and Greg Thompson, both members of the Utah Westerners, as they present an overview of the history behind the creation the world class Alf Engen Ski Museum. They will discuss the unique partnership that exists between the Alf Engen Ski Museum (which features one-of-a-kind interactive exhibits) and the J. Willard Marriott Library–Utah Ski Archives. Both organizations use the highly successful ski history approach which makes the relationship a model of excellence, recognized world-wide. The ski museum was used by the Salt Lake Organizing Committee (SLOC) to host the world media during the 2002 Olympic Winter Games and has twice been given the distinction of “Best of State” museum repository. The evening presentation will be the first, and perhaps only occasion, where both Alan and Greg (co-authors of FIRST TRACKS – A Century of Skiing in Utah published by Gibbs Smith, 2001). They will discuss their close friendship and working relationship which formed the basis for the Utah Ski Archives and the Alf Engen Ski Museum to become a reality.
The evening will also include a bus tour of the Utah Olympic Park (led by Connie Nelson, Executive director of the Alf Engen Ski Museum Foundation), opening reception, dinner, the evening’s presentation and self-guided tours of the Alf Engen Ski Museum.
ALAN K. ENGEN
A native of Salt Lake City, Alan retired as Alta’s Director of Skiing, a position he held from 1998 to April 2011. He also spent over thirty years in the corporate world, holding a number of management positions with Hallmark Cards, Inc. in Kansas City and Hercules Aerospace in Salt Lake City. He received both BS and BFA degrees from the University of Utah (1963) and an Executive MBA degree from Kansas University (1973). Alan was also a member of the Salt Lake City Olympic Bid jump sub-committee involved with investigating alternative potential ski jumping sites and making the selection recommendations which resulted in the Utah Winter Sports Park (currently known as Utah Olympic Park) being constructed in the early 1990s. Since the late 1980s, Alan has played a key role as a founder of a world class regional ski museum, carrying his legendary father’s namesake, currently located at Utah Olympic Park.
In addition to functioning in the Chairman Emeritus position of the Alf Engen Ski Museum Foundation, he serves as Chairman Emeritus of the Alta Historical Society and is a charter member of the Utah Ski Archives at the University of Utah J. Willard Marriott Library. He is also active member of the Bonneville Kiwanis Club. He and his wife, Barbara, have been married fifty- two-years and have two sons and four grand-daughters.
GREGORY THOMPSON
Gregory C. Thompson, is the Associate Dean of the University of Utah’s J. Willard Marriott Library for Special Collections and an Adjunct Assistant Professor of History. He received his BS from Colorado State University (1965), BA from Fort Lewis College (1967), and his MS (1971) and Ph.D. (1981) degrees from the University of Utah. From 1967 to 1983, Greg, a historian of the American West, served on the staff of the University of Utah’s American West Center. His research focused on the Ute tribes of Colorado and Utah and he served as a consultant to the San Juan County School District (Utah) and the Southern Ute Tribe of Ignacio, Colorado. Greg has published several monographs on the Ute tribe including Southern Ute Lands, 1848-1899: The Creation of a Reservation (1972); The Southern Utes: A Tribal History (1972); and edited, with Floyd A. O’Neil, A History of the Indians of the United States: A Syllabus (1979).
May Announcement for the Utah Westerners
“AT A GLANCE, CODY, WYOMING”
Presented by Donna Poulton
For those Westerners who are going on the field trip in June, this lecture will be an introduction to the remarkable town of Cody, Wyoming, its cast of characters and to our generous hostess, Naoma Tate, who has made much of our upcoming experience possible. For those who can’t go on the trip this year, this lecture is the next best thing. The talk will focus on the Buffalo Bill Center of the West and its five museums. You’ll soon come to understand why it is referred to internationally as “The Smithsonian of the West.” Part of the lecture will describe the Western Art in the permanent collection of the Whitney, one of the five museums, which exhibits iconic works by Frederic Remington, Charles Russell, Frank Tenney Johnson, Thomas Moran and so many others. The Whitney will receive particular attention in the lecture as it is the gallery that will most likely be bypassed by the majority of the group for the world famous gun collection just next door!
On the second day of our visit, we will tour the ranch home of Naoma Tate, where Westerners will learn about her remarkable art collection, which contains works by Buck Dunton, Maynard Dixon, Frank Tenney Johnson, Albert Bierstadt and an exciting collection of contemporary Wyoming artists. A number of those works will be discussed in detail in this lecture. In addition, the history of Naoma Tate’s home, which was once a dude ranch with such notable guests as John Wayne will also be described.
Donna Poulton
After curating art of Utah and the West at the University of Utah’s Museum of Fine Arts for seven years, Donna Poulton has recently established her own company, Donna Poulton Fine Art Consulting. She grew up in Dillon, Montana where she spent much of her time on her grandfather’s ranch. She lived and worked in Germany for twelve years and received her M.A. from Boston University in Stuttgart and later received her Ph.D from Brigham Young University. She has juried and curated many exhibitions, including Bierstadt to Warhol: American Indians in the West and LeConte Stewart: Masterworks. Dr. Poulton has written articles on Utah and Western Art for Fine Art Connoisseur Magazine and Western Art and Architecture. She is the co-author of Utah Art, Utah Artists; Painters of Utah’s Canyons and Deserts; Reuben Kirkham: Pioneer Artist and Deserts; LeConte Stewart Masterworks and her current book Painters of the Tetons, co-authored with her husband Jim Poulton.
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.
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