Reflections on a Rural Tradition: A Photographic Essay

Utah Historical Quarterly

Vol. 47, 1949, No. 2

Reflections on a Rural Tradition: A Photographic Essay

BY CAROLYN RHODES-JONES

AS INSULATED BY THE 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. There 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. The tale is not unique to Utah, but, nevertheless, it is Utah's own.

The photographs included in this essay were, for the most part, compiled in 1977 with National Endowment for the Humanities funds for the Interpreting Local History collection. They illustrate four distinctive rural regions in Utah: the Sanpete-Sevier valleys, the Bear River region, Carbon County, and Utah's Dixie.

The Way of Life

Although livelihoods depended primarily upon agriculture, farming was not the only occupation practiced. As communities developed so did the businesses that complemented the rural economy. Geography and proximity to the railroad played large roles in determining peripheral industries—from coal mines to salt works to sugar factories.

A Trenton farmstead, 1914. Courtesy Utah State University

Spring meant shearing sheep in Sanpete-Sevier country. Crawford's herd near Manti. Courtesy Brigham Young University.

Top: Roundhouse and railroad yards at Montpelier, Idaho, ca. 1920. Courtesy Idaho Historical Society.

Opposite: Utah and Northern Railroad provided the first rail transportation for Cache and Box Elder crops. Courtesy Idaho Museum of Natural History.

Salina salt works, 1896. George Edward Anderson photograph, courtesy Rell G. Francis, Heritage Prints.

Bottom: Allen Hansen harness shop in Richfield, 1920. USHS collections.

Coal mine in Cedar Canyon, Emery County. Charles R. Savage photograph, USHS collections.

Don and John Henry Higginson hauled crops for the mines at Sunnyside. USHS collections.

The Community

The community and its institutions reflected the life-styles and the priorities of its people. The earliest landscapes and street scenes are evidence of what people thought was important. In these rural communities a Mormon temple often dominates the landscape, but schools, downtown gathering places, and county fairs are part of the scene as well.

St. George Tabernacle was built of red sandstone. USHS collections.

Pinto ward and school, built in 1866, was demolished in 1950s. USHS collections.

Manti Temple towers over rural setting. George Edward Anderson photograph, USHS collections.

Front gate of Hotel Burgoyne at Montpelier, Idaho. Courtesy Idaho Historical Society.

Top: Carnival swing at Sanpete County Fair, 1926. George Edward Anderson photograph, courtesy Rell G. Francis, Heritage Prints.

Middle: Salina drugstore and post office. George Edward Anderson photograph, courtesy Rell G. Francis, Heritage Prints.

Bottom: Friends gather for a rag bee in Mount Pleasant. George Edward Anderson photograph, courtesy Brigham Young University.

Top: Anthony W. Ivins home in St. George. USHS collections.

Bottom: Mrs. Gramb's boardinghouse at Silver Reef, 1880s. USHS collections.

Bottom: Dry-farm settlers pose before their first house at Blue Creek in northern Utah, 1911. Courtesy Utah State University.

The People

The people were a diverse lot, just as they should be. Although poverty was a part of "making a go of it" for many people, it was not universal; and gentility and sophistication were as much a part of society as were hard work and simplicity. The clothes they wore and the houses they occupied tell a great deal about them, but their faces tell us even more.

Sanpete Valley Railway engine. Courtesy Brigham Young University.

Top Left: Miss Caroline Westenskow of Manti. George Edward Anderson photograph, courtesy Brigham Young University.

Top Right: This Shoshone family from the Washakie Indian Farm posed at Logan, 1909. Courtesy Utah State University.

Bottom: Ephraim gentlemen. Courtesy Brigham Young University.

James Thompson family of Elsinore, 1904. George Edward Anderson courtesy Rell G. Francis, Heritage Prints. photograph,