Browse Items (31 total)

Hailing from the mountainous border region between Spain and France, Basques are a tightly-knit and proud ethnic group. Find out how Basque immigrants to the Intermountain West maintained their identity, community, and traditions so far from home. In…

Before food blogs and Pinterest, Utah women shared their best recipes in community cookbooks. More than just recipes, these books kept rural foodways and food culture alive. Today, home cooks can simply search the internet to find thousands of…

Potato growing clubs became all the rage in the early 20th century as interest in a formal agricultural education grew. Agricultural work is critical to rural Utah’s history. But, it wasn’t until Utah State Agricultural College -- known as USAC…

Do you know where your food comes from? Utahns once depended on local butchers for fresh meat. But, in the early 1900s business boomed for the Ogden Union Stockyards, signaling a shift in how and where Utahns purchased their food. Today, most…

Every autumn, large crowds descend on the small rural town of Brigham City for "Peach Days." It's the oldest harvest festival in Utah. And it all started with a one dollar investment in peach pits back in 1855. Each September, in northern Utah, the…

Conflict between Brigham Young and US Army Colonel Patrick Connor personified the tension between mining versus agriculture as suitable ways of life in the Utah Territory. But the reality was not quite as stark as either man made it out to be.Mormon…

The creation of Carbon County in 1894 resulted from a rift between Mormon agriculturalists and non-Mormon miners, and illustrates the struggle over identity in rural Utah. The discovery of industrial-grade coal in 1882 at Castle Gate in Price Canyon…

You know those world-famous Green River melons? Well, they need lots of water to build that juicy goodness. Learn how one farm along the Green River solved the problem of getting water to its fields. The town of Green River, Utah, is known for its…

The evil queen gave Snow White a poisonous apple that sent her into a magical deep sleep, but in Tooele County, a mining company used run-off water polluted with heavy metals to grow their toxic orchards. In 1933, a Tooele mining company called the…

From ancient times to today, the harvest and preparation of food has been tough work, especially in the arid deserts of the Great Basin. Learn how Paiute families did that work together in order to feed and foster their communities.Throughout Utah,…

If someone admits they’ve broken the law, the government is not supposed to take up their cause. Yet that is exactly what happened when a group of farmers in Heber Valley stole water from the Ute Reservation for decades. Water in Utah is a precious…