A curated reading list. Last updated July 7, 2025.
To understand Utah during the Great Depression, we must understand how individuals, businesses, and government responded to the most severe economic crisis in American history. The literature on the Great Depression in Utah addresses all three responses. Articles from Bunnell, Iber, and Flanagan emphasize the personal, with particular attention to the fortitude and strength of character demonstrated in the face of hardship. Flanagan follows a labor inspector whose personability and fairness led many of the laborers around him to keep him in high regard while they themselves showed the struggles of finding work during the trying times.
On industry and labor, and varying approaches to the crisis, readers are encouraged to peruse pieces by Parson and Patton. Beyond exercising genuine ingenuity or relying on one another to tackle economic problems, Utah businesses chose to rely on federal and state assistance. But what kind of assistance could the government provide to aid these Utahns? Thomas Quinn shows that state assistance, provided by Governor Henry Blood during his first year, was atypical. Governor Blood reorganized and reformatted the state government to help save costs, which would in turn reduce taxpayers’ burden of paying for it while encouraging local municipalities to do the same.
Meanwhile, McPherson and Hinton create a fuller picture of what federal aid looked like in Utah than we’ve previously known. Utahns were strong during the Great Depression but were not prideful. In all, the literature demonstrates that they accepted help when needed but also sought to work hard and help revive their own economy to a healthy state because Utahns were shown to have the character and will to do so.
Arrington, Leonard J. “Utah’s Great Drought of 1934.” Utah Historical Quarterly 54, no. 3 (Summer 1986): 245–64. The economic situation for Utah during the Great Depression was one of the direst in the union and was exacerbated by natural causes. Record-breaking heat waves and low rainfall left Utah farmers in desperation. Arrington shows how federal funding and creative methods of capturing water led Utah farmers away from that place of desperation.
Bunnell, Helen E. “Depression Memories.” Utah Historical Quarterly 54, no. 3 (Summer 1986): 265–67. Often solely viewed through an economic lens, the Great Depression was also an emotional depression for many. The citizenry of the time that found the emotional fortitude to weather this historic event emerged with impressions, not scars. This was the case for the author of this article. With an increased focus on love, youth, and health, she and her husband managed to find joy even during depression.
Flanagan, Barney L. “A Labor Inspector During the Great Depression.” Utah Historical Quarterly 54, no. 3 (Summer 1986): 240–44. Flanagan’s article discusses the strength of character that the working man of the Great Depression had. Those that could work were allowed to work little. But that was far less important than the knowledge that these men were treated no differently than one another. They sought absolute equality without discrimination, in many cases more so than money.
Hinton, Wayne K. “The Economics of Ambivalence: Utah’s Depression Experience.” Utah Historical Quarterly 54, no. 3 (Summer 1986): 268–85. Utah has a long history of resisting federal involvement in its affairs. However, Wayne Hinton takes an opportunity to show that in times of need, Utahns were not prideful and took the federal government’s help in stride, with overwhelming support. Despite this instance of accepting help, Utahns’ general attitude towards federal involvement in its state, which has largley stayed the same, has led to the misplaced historical belief that Utah refused the aid when presented to it.
Iber, Jorge. “‘El Diablo Nos Esta Llevando’: Utah Hispanics and the Great Depression.” Utah Historical Quarterly 66, no. 2 (Spring 1998): 159–77. Demographically, Utah is often classified as a heavily white and Latter-day Saint population. As such, minorities are often adversely affected when major hardships occur. Jorge Iber points this out in this piece detailing the Hispanic population’s response to the Great Depression. Unemployment, mortality rates, and the conflict between pride and charity worsened. Iber uses personal accounts of various individuals to indicate such results.
McPherson, Robert S., and Jesse Grover. “Turning ‘the Picture a Whole Lot’: The CCC Invasion of Southeastern Utah, 1933–1942.” Utah Historical Quarterly 84, no. 2 (Spring 2016): 153–71. President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s solution for the Great Depression was the New Deal, which was defined by an increase in governmental programs designed to spur the economy. The CCC, or Civilian Conservation Corps, is one such department. Grover and McPherson look at Utah during this economic crisis and the peaceful encroachment the state had culturally and economically with the CCC. The authors detail the overall economic benefit the CCC had on the Utah economy, leveraging this knowledge into a better understanding of how the New Deal helped many rural communities at the time of its implementation.
Parson, Robert, John W. Walters, and Emily Gurr-Thompson. “Seeds of Change: Farm Organizations in Depression and Post-War Utah.” Utah Historical Quarterly 79, no. 4 (Fall 2011): 338–57. During the Great Depression, Democrats held a great deal of political power, and this era is marked by an increase of bureaucratic organizations, each designed to help the public in some form or fashion. The Utah Farm Bureau is no exception, which was created to aid Utahns in dealings with public officials throughout the Great Depression and even during and after World War II.
Patton, Cody. “Beehive Brews.” Utah Historical Quarterly 89, no. 3 (2021): 247–60. Patton, in an in-depth history of a Utah brewery, briefly sheds light on a source of revenue that Utah managed to extract during the Great Depression. Patton, detailing Utah as one of the most sober states in the union through various polls, acknowledges the irony that a company that has its main product as alcohol was a major economic success.
Quinn, R. Thomas. “Out of the Depression’s Depths: Henry H. Blood’s First Year as Governor.” Utah Historical Quarterly 54, no. 3 (Summer 1986): 216–39. Thomas Quinn describes Governor Henry Blood’s first year as a tumultuous experience. Facing the economic stagnation brought on by the Great Depression, Blood proved his worth through a continuous lobbying of Washington and a strict economy at home, bringing results in a downtrodden moment in history.