In This Issue

The basic story of Utah's "new immigrants" will be familiar to long-time readers of Utah Historical Quarterly. These were the people who came to Utah from eastern, southern, and southeastern Europe in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to find work in the mines, in smelters, on the railroads, and elsewhere as blue-collar workers. They came in sizeable numbers, tended to be non-Mormons who settled in ethnic enclaves, and took two or three generations to integrate fully into the social mainstream.

Much less common were immigrants from these more distant European ports who came as LDS converts during the pioneer period. Daniel, Antoinette, and Jacques (James) Bertoch were three such people. Converted Waldensians, these young people left Piedmont for Zion in 1854 and experienced an incredible series of adventures that have somehow escaped the attention of historians until now. Their amazing saga is detailed in our first article.

Taking place at the same time were talks and negotiations between territorial leaders and the Ute leader Wakara. A complex, mercurial man, Wakara was (and continues to be) many things to many people. Historians have been fascinated by him from the beginning, and several of their portraits have graced the pages of this journal through the years. Our second article builds on previous studies by adding much new detail and insight as it focuses on the years before the Walker War. Written with sensitivity and balance, it endows this important personality with flesh-and-blood traits never before delineated so well.

Our third article has the feel of modernity as it centers on the coming of electrical power to rural Salt Lake County from the 1880s to the 1920s. The Progress Company was an important pioneer in this far-reaching technology, and its turbulent history is well told in these pages for the first time.

Hard to believe-but true-electrical power had already found its way into some businesses and along city streets in Murray and Salt Lake City as cowboys, Indians, and U.S. soldiers were still engaged in Wild West-styled shootouts elsewhere in the territory. A fast-paced, confusing skirmish at Soldier Crossing in San Juan County, poorly understood by contemporary observers and variously interpreted by historians since, is finally analyzed and explained by two energetic, on-the-ground researchers in our concluding article. It is an appropriate capstone to this issue, combining with the preceding articles to illustrate the variety of experiences, personalities, circumstances, geography, values, and incidents that define Utah history and make it so interesting.

OPPOSITE: "Dinner Scene of Platueau Cow Boys," a c. 1887photo. Sam Todd, number 13, participated in and wrote about the Soldier Crossing skirmish.