Category Archive

In January 4, 1896, after decades of struggle, Utah became the 45th state to enter the Union. Utah’s path to statehood was complicated and often controversial, which makes its journey an important American story. Utah’s leaders applied for statehood seven times—and failed six times—over five decades. Here we compiled a list …

In anticipation of the 250th anniversary of 1776, the Utah State Historical Society is revisiting The Peoples of Utah, published in 1976. The original Peoples of Utah, which surveyed a number of racial and ethnic communities in the state, has become a foundational resource in Utah history. Our new project …

By Haden Griggs             The This Is the Place monument in Salt Lake City commemorates and evokes the struggle nineteenth-century Latter-day Saints faced in settling a land new to them. Although specifically a reference to Utah’s first permanent Euro American settlers, the sentiment expressed by the monument’s title aptly represents …

Editors’ note (by UHQ editorial fellow Haden Griggs): The Diablo nuclear test was part of a larger series of tests known as Operation Plumbbob that took place at the Nevada Nuclear Test Site between May and October of 1957. The Plumbbob tests occurred during major worldwide concerns about the safety …

By Kristine Shorey Forbes The recent discovery of a sheepskin map purported to be the original plat of Salt Lake City created by LDS surveyor savant Henry G. Sherwood fewer than two weeks after Brigham Young arrived in the valley has brought this long-forgotten grandfather of Zion back into the …