Utah Historical Quarterly
Some recent issues of Utah Historical Quarterly
Since 1928, when the first volume of the Utah Historical Quarterly was published, the best scholarship on Utah history usually finds its way into the pages of UHQ.
The journal is filled with articles, memoirs, annotated primary sources, book reviews, and photos.
UHQ is published four times yearly and sent to members of the Utah State Historical Society. Most libraries have copies of back issues, or you can get back issues through 2003 as part of the Utah History Suite CD.
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CURRENT ISSUE: Volume 77, Number 4 (Fall 2009 Issue)
ARTICLES
The Battle for Rainbow Bridge
By Hank Hassell
To Lay Bare All of Spiritualism’s Shams: Harry Waite
and Oscar Eliason’s Anti-Medium Crusade
By Brandon Johnson
Showdown at Geddes Gulch: How Prior Appropriation Ambushed Weber County
By Val Holley
All Too Rare: The Rise and Fall of Jazz DJs on Utah AM Radio, 1945-1965
By Laurence M. Yorgason
IN THIS ISSUE
Readers of the Utah Historical Quarterly are accustomed to the variety of
articles and book reviews that comprise most issues of the Quarterly. This
last offering for 2009 continues the clectic tradition with topics ranging
from irrigation and water rights in the Ogden area from the 1880s to the
1940s, magic in Salt Lake City in the 1890s, Jazz DJs and radio in the 1950s, and
legal, environmental, and religious controversies associated with southeastern Utah’s
Rainbow Bridge in the 1960s and 1970s. Book reviews highlight studies about the
ancient peoples of the Great Basin, the Mountain Meadow Massacre, the Catholic
Church in Utah, art in the West, women and education, military life in the West, and
two of Utah’s most colorful characters; Harry Alonzo Longabaugh—better known as
The Sundance Kid—and William H. Smart, a latter-day pioneer and leader in the
Uinta Basin.
Authorization by Congress in 1955 of the Colorado River Storage Project
included a provision requiring protective measures to keep impounded waters from
harming Rainbow Bridge National Monument. Our first article discusses the four
sites considered feasible for construction of a structure to block waters from Lake
Powell from reaching the boundaries of the monument after completion of Glen
Canyon Dam. But as the waters of Lake Powell inundated one site after another
eliminating the feasibility of building the protective structures, and as the lake waters extended under the world famous bridge, the fight to protect Rainbow Bridge
returned to the halls of Congress and reached all the way to the United States
Supreme Court.
Even before man began to record historical events, mystics and magicians awed,
bewildered, and entertained their fellow human beings. Those who appeared to
possess supernaturalistic powers could also be found in Utah. Skeptics and detractors
challenged those who performed magical feats that others could not. Among these
detractors were mystics and magicians themselves. Our second article examines the
conflict between Harry Waite and Oscar Eliason in Salt Lake City during the 1890s
and in doing so reveals much about the world of magic and the nuances and
peculiarities of mystics, their practices, and beliefs.
If magic could seem intangible and fleeting, water is tangible and essential to the
permanence of life and growth in Utah. Our third article delves into the complex
world of irrigation and allocation of water and the systems that Utahns implemented
to manage them. Nineteenth-century Utahns expended as much energy and time in
building and maintaining a viable irrigation system as they did in planting, tending,
and harvesting their crops. In addition, as the showdown at Geddes Gulch suggests,
political and legal battles were never far from the Utah farmer and his crops.
Our final article for 2009 takes us from the realm of conflict and disharmony to a
world of tranquility and ease found in jazz presented by the Utah DJs who were
dedicated to providing an original American musical genre to radio listeners in the
post-World War II years. A century after pioneers arrived to establish their homes in
the valleys of Utah, much had changed. This change is nowhere more apparent than
in the acceptance and popularity of jazz music.
These four articles and the books reviewed in this issue offer unusual and important
perspectives on Utah and its history. As the two photographs above suggest, even
with such a mundane task as ditch digging, a slightly altered viewpoint can reveal
different but important insights to the discerning eye.
BOOK REVIEWS
David L. Bigler and Will Bagley. Innocent Blood: Essential Narratives of
the Mountain Meadows Massacre.
Reviewed by Robert H. Briggs
William B. Smart. Mormonism’s Last Colonizer: The Life and Times of
William H. Smart.
Reviewed by Edward A. Geary
Bernice Maher Mooney and J. Terrence Fitzgerald. Salt of the Earth: The History of the Catholic Church in Utah, 1776-2007.
Reviewed by Frederick Quinn
Catherine S. Fowler and Don D. Fowler, eds. The Great Basin: People and Place in Ancient Times.
Reviewed by Matthew T. Seddon
Donna B. Ernest. The Sundance Kid: The Life of Harry Alonzo Longabaugh.
Reviewed by Daniel M. Davis
Kevin Adams. Class and Race in the Frontier Army: Military Life in the West, 1870-1890.
Reviewed by Robert S. McPherson
Andrea G. Radke-Moss. Bright Epoch: Women & Coeducation in the American West.
Reviewed by Melissa Coy Ferguson
William H. Goetzmann and William N. Goetzmann. The West of the Imagination, Second Edition.
Reviewed by James R. Swensen