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Northern Utah
For decades after it was constructed in 1891, this depot and the railway it served, functioned as northern utah's main link to the outside world, or at least south to the entertainments and attractions found in Ogden and Salt Lake. Eventually, with the construction of major highways, car travel became the transportation mode of choice. Recently, the depot has been renovated and now houses a restaurant.
Photo: Historic Railroad Depot in Logan
In the early 1900's Utah's population was primarily rural. "Industry" meant farming and ranching. It was a time when distances often made medical assistance impossible and simple maladies sometimes claimed lives. For many rural communities "health care" was folk remedies mingled with a bit of superstition and a hearty dose of common sense. Patent medicines, many of which were little more than opium derivatives or alcohol blended with herbal extracts, were popular cures and tonics. They were widely sold in stores and occasionally by traveling peddlers. Companies paid farmers for the privilege of advertising on their barns. This rural "billboard" in northern Utah was originally painted in the late 1920's. It was maintained by the Dr. Pierce company and repainted ever three or four years until World War II.
Photo: Rural Billboard in Cache Valley
Brigham City sits on a fan-shaped alluvial delta beneath the 9,000 foot peaks of the Wasatch Mountain range. The beautiful Brigham City Tabernacle is a northern Utah icon built on a site personally chosen by Mormon leader Brigham Young, for whom the town was named. The tabernacle was originally constructed between 1876 and 1890. It's exterior is marked by Gothic arched doors and windows, and a massive white tower accented by sixteen spires topping brick buttresses. In 1896 the community was stunned when their beautiful meeting place was gutted by fire. Determined to rebuild, they completed the duplicate interior in less than a year.
Photo: Historic Mormon Tabernacle
In it's hey-day, Ogden was one of the country's most important railroad hubs. Since it was in direct proximity to the depot, bustling 25th Street provided travelers, and locals alike, with goods and services of all kinds. Purveyors of food and drink were plentiful, including an ice cream parlor run by the town's most celebrated madam. Ogden's railroad boom lasted from the 1870's into the early 1900's. For decades thereafter, 25th Street experienced gradual decline, but in Ogden today the street once again draws traffic as a restored (and respectable) shopping and dining district.
Photo - Ogden's Historic 25th Street
Antelope Island is the largest of the Great Salt Lake's ten major islands. The Fielding Garr Ranch House was built on the island in 1848 and occupied until 1981, making it the oldest continuously occupied residence in Utah. The island has served as a herding ground for horses, cattle, and sheep at various times since the mid 1800's. In 1893 newspaper publisher William Glassman had twelve bison placed on the island. In 1911 one hundred bison were counted on the island, one of the largest herds in the United States. Antelope Island State Park, as it is now known, is home to antelope, elk, deer, and many other species of wildlife and birds. The seven hundred Great Plains Bison which now roam Antelope Island are descended from Glassman's original herd.
Photo: Great Plains Bison / Antelope Island State Park
Geologists say the Great Salt Lake is the ancient remnant of a vast, inland sea. Although its waters are more than five times saltier than the ocean, the lake has lured bathers throughout Utah's history. During the last hundred years several resorts have dotted the south and east shores. The most elaborate of these was Saltair, built in 1893. Its centerpiece was a showy, five story Moorish-style pavilion where the dance floor could hold 1,000 couples. Saltair was destroyed by fire in 1925. It was rebuilt, and burned again in 1939. Again it was rebuilt, but after a roller coaster fire in 1951 and receding lake waters which left it high and dry, it was closed in 1968. What remained of the onion-domed pavilion burned to the ground in 1970. Today, a smaller resort built in the 1980's echoes the glamour of the original "Lady of the Lake".
Photo: Modern day Saltair Resort, Great Salt Lake
The Utah State Capitol Building in Salt Lake City was completed in 1915, nineteen years after statehood was granted in Renaissance Revival design was the result of a nation-wide architectural competition.
Photo: Utah State Capitol, Salt Lake City
Built in the 1860's Salt Lake City's Council Hall was the meeting place of the Utah Territorial Legislature for nearly thirty years. The building was moved to its present Capitol Hill location in the early 1960's.
Historic Council Hall, SLC
The City and County Building at Washington Square in Salt Lake City was built in 1894 on the site of one of the first camps established when Mormon settlers came to the Salt Lake Valley in 1847. The massive buildings architecture is in the Richardson Romanesque-style. After statehood was granted in 1896 this served as Utah's State Capitol Building for 1915 until the current on was completed in 1915. The grounds often host various festival and events.
Photo: City and County Building, Salt Lake City
Since settlement days, Temple Square has been the spiritual heart of the LDS (Mormon) Church. In the early years of Utah's statehood, it was also the landmark center of the growing capital city. A ten acre block was set apart by a 1.5 foot wall with wrought iron gates. Inside, at great sacrifice, early Utahns built several church buildings including the oval-shaped Tabernacle, now home to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. The gothic Salt Lake Temple was completed in 1893, forty years after its construction began and three years before statehood. Salt Lake City's streets were built with Temple Square as their origin, and the Square functioned as the center of their numbering grid -- a pattern still in use today.
Photo: Iron Gate Framing entrance to Historic Temple Square
This Byzantine Revival-styled Church was completed in 1924. It's elaborate exterior includes numerous towering columns supporting two gold-crowned bell towers. Blue and gold tiles decorate the arcade like entry. The patterns and colors are repeated on the tiled rooftop. This beautiful building serves as a reminder that early in the 20th century the vibrant Greek community, employed primarily in the state's railroad and mining industries, comprised Utah's largest immigrant group.
Photo - Salt Lake City's Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church
At 7,000 feet on the eastern edge of the Wasatch Mountains, the area surrounding Park City was once the province of a few hardy farmers and some small scale cattle ranches. That changed dramatically in the 1880-90's when silver mining in the area create a "boom town" with a huge, and sometimes rowdy, population. The dawn of the 1900's brought a sharp decline in mining fortunes. Park City returned to its rural roots until the second half of this century when the area's ski industry was born. The sport of snow skiing which was probably first enjoyed by Scandinavian miner's decades before, allowed the city to become northern Utah's premier resort town. Today, Park City bustles with three ski resorts. It is the U.S. Ski team's permanent headquarters and was the site of several venues during the 2002 Olympic Winter Games.
Photo: Historic Dairy farm near Park City
In the early decades of the 1900's following statehood, remote ranches and homesteads in northeastern Utah still operated mainly by horse and manpower. Because of their isolation, families learned to balance their needs with the demands of the environment in order to survive. Food, building materials, and many other necessities had to be produced on the ranch or taken from the surrounding forests. For many homesteaders a trip to Vernal, the closest city, could take two days. Sometimes it was a lonely life with a harsh winters and fierce struggles over water rights. Everyone, children included, had to work hard. But it was also a life punctuated by moments of freedom, with beautiful mountain meadows to roam and plenty of forest trails to explore.
Photo: Oscar Swett Ranch Historic Site/ Ashley NF
Northeastern Utah was once the swampy home of dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures. Later, the geologic mayhem that created the Uinta Mountains further altered the landscape. Situated in the Uinta Basin on the south slope of the High Uintas Wilderness lie the sovereign lands of the Uinta and Ouray Indian Reservation. On Reservation lands, this small house of worship continues to serve a congregation of residents scattered across the area, as it has since it was founded in 1896.
Photo: Holy Spirit Episcopal Church in Randlett, Northeast Utah
Named after a Ute Indian Chief, the Peteetneet Academy was constructed in the Central Utah city of Payson in 1901. It now functions as a cultural arts center including an art gallery, an academy for the arts, and a large collection of historic photographs. The building's striking Richardson Romanesque exterior has been lovingly preserved.
Photo: Peteetneet Academy, Payson
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