In This Issue

VE Day at Hill Field, 1945. Courtesy of Roger D. Launius.

A hundred years ago the framers of Utah's state constitution celebrated an end to their two-month task by visiting the Great Salt Lake. They were just a few of the hundreds of thousands of people who have found something of value in that strange body of water through the years From its initial discovery to the present, the lake has exerted a fast grip on the imaginations of explorers, settlers, scientists, naturalists, politicians, historians, and tourists Not until now, however—within our first article—has its maritime history been fully analyzed It is a modest history, no doubt, but interesting, colorful, and deserving of an audience.

Fifty years ago Utahns were celebrating a different achievement—the end to World War II They, like Americans everywhere, had donated four years of sustained effort to the cause of defeating the monstrous powers of fascism. In the process they had seen their state change greatly from the comings and goings of servicemen and the establishment of service industries Utahns' attitudes and values changed as well as a result of the many sacrifices made. Our second and third articles detail these dynamics.

Although the pace of change slackened for most Utahns during the decade following World War II, at least one group, the Southern Paiutes, were thrust into a political and social maelstrom under the proposal to terminate their reservation status The assumptions, politics, processes, and consequences of that controversial event are outlined in the final selection It is a sobering reminder of the excesses of ethnocentrism that our society has been given to from time to time and for which the early years of the 1950s were particularly notorious.