Often referred to informally as the "dean of Utah historians," no one, perhaps, deserved the title more than David Eugene Miller (1909-1978). Competent in virtually every aspect of the history of his native state, Miller distinguished himself especially as an authority on the Great Salt Lake and Utah's historic trails, though his expertise extended as well into the entire trans- Mississippi West, the Nauvoo period of Mormon history, and United States Constitutional history. Miller spent his entire teaching career (1947-1977) at the University of Utah, where he was a founder of the Alpha Rho Chapter of the national history honorary society Phi Alpha Theta (one of the first chapters), a head of the History Department, a president of the Utah Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters, and a founder of the American West Center. His professional influence extended far beyond the University, however, and he served in various capacities with the Utah State Historical Society, the Organization of American Historians, and as a Visiting Professor in Germany.

Miller sometimes jokingly called the Great Salt Lake "my lake," and few, if any, could come closer, through long association and profound knowledge, to sustaining the claim than he. Born in Syracuse, on the shore of the lake, Miller was a great-grandson of Henry W. Miller, who had created in 1859 the family sheep grazing business on Fremont Island (once known as Miller Island). Thus it was natural that, after completing his undergraduate and master's work at Brigham Young University, he should choose the history of the lake as the topic for his doctoral dissertation at the University of Southern California. The dissertation was never published, probably because of the appearance in the year of its completion (1947) of Dale L. Morgan's similar book on the topic, but Miller nevertheless achieved recognition, which he retained to the end of his life, as a premier authority on all aspects of the lake.

Miller also shared with Morgan an interest in Utah's fur trappers and historic trails, an interest that first manifested itself in the early 1950s as he participated in the Hudson's Bay Records Society's publication of the journals of Peter Skene Ogden. Miller distinguished himself during his study of the Ogden journals by adding to his mastery of the written sources an intimate knowledge of the actual terrain. A strong geographical emphasis, which had first appeared in his study of the Great Salt Lake, became his hallmark in his work on Ogden, the Oregon Trail, the Hole-in-the-Rock expedition, and the Dominguez-Escalante trek.

His award-winning work on the Hole-in-the-Rock episode was arguably Miller's greatest achievement as a historian. One of the great set-pieces of Mormon history, the San Juan Mission had become clouded by myth and hagiography when Miller first became attracted to its study in the 1950s, and few reliable sources were at that time available. Not content with exhausting archival material, Miller contacted all locatable descendants of the members of the original party, and thereby brought to light a great number of previously unexploited sources. As his previous work, the Hole-in-the-Rock study achieved additional depth from his intimate knowledge of the actual trail acquired on repeated traverses by Jeep and on foot. The thoroughness of his research surprised even Miller, who was able to begin the preface to the second edition of the book (1966) with the statement that "Contrary to my expectations very little new information regarding the Hole-in-the-Rock trek has come to me since the first edition of this work in 1959."

As a member of the LDS Church, Miller wrote of the Mormons with sympathy and understanding, but with a commitment as well to the critical standards of the historical profession. It was no doubt largely as a result of the searching impartiality with which he wrote of the Hole- in-the-Rockers that he was approached by Nauvoo Restoration, Inc. in 1962 to prepare a thorough history of the period of Mormon occupation of that city as a guide to its preservation.

Miller's interest in historic trails persisted throughout his life. In addition to researching portions of the Oregon Trail through Wyoming and Utah, during which he was able to revise considerably the current understanding of the routes, Miller was chosen during the Bicentennial year to supervise the Utah portion of the retracing of the route of the Dominguez-Escalante expedition. Though Miller earned an impressive reputation as a writer, he also took seriously his responsibilities as a teacher in the history department of the University of Utah. In addition to the undergraduate survey of American history, he offered courses in the Trans-Mississippi West, Utah history, and U.S. Constitutional history. A popular teacher, Miller was known for his lavish use of photographs and other visual materials by which he brought into the classroom the sites he had visited. Much of the visual orientation of his courses no doubt came from his experience in pioneering the teaching of history by television. His television courses in American and Utah history were immensely popular and offered repeatedly over many years. Another highlight of his teaching career was a visiting professorship at Christian Albrechts University, Kiel, Germany, during the summer of 1967, which inaugurated an exchange program of students and teachers between that institution and the University of Utah.

Miller's death on 21 August 1978 left a void in Utah history that was noted by many, and tributes were not slow in coming. A lecture series at the University has brought a number of distinguished scholars of the American West to Utah, and the Utah State Place Names Committee designated a point on Fremont Island "David E. Miller Point" in his honor.