Reflections on a Rural Tradition: A Photographic Essay BY CAROLYN
RHODES-JONES
/ \ s INSULATED BY T H E terrain around them as by the traditions that gave them life, Utah's rural communities form its heartland. These settlements, cradled by geography and culture, held a shared sense of place and a shared sense of purpose, and those who came to live in them seldom came by chance. However, the story to be told in the following pages is not about their coming but about their staying: the institutions they built, the land they plowed, and the children they parented. T h e r e is a kind of poetry written in the portraits and landscapes—an epic of heroism, endurance, and toil but also of gentility, enterprise, and pleasure. T h e tale is not unique to Utah, but, nevertheless, it is Utah's own. T h e photographs included in this essay were, for the most part, compiled in 1977 with National F^ndowment for the Humanities funds for the Interpreting Local History collection. They illustrate four distinctive rural regions in U t a h : the Sanpete-Sevier valleys, the Bear River region, Carbon County, and Utah's Dixie. Mrs. Rhodes-Jones is exhibit coordinator for the Interpreting Local History project.
