In This Issue

Readers of the Utah Historical Quarterly are accustomed to the variety of articles and book reviews that comprise most issues of the Quarterly. This last offering for 2009 continues the eclectic tradition with topics ranging from irrigation and water rights in the Ogden area from the 1880s to the 1940s, magic in Salt Lake City in the 1890s, Jazz DJs and radio in the 1950s, and legal, environmental, and religious controversies associated with southeastern Utah’s Rainbow Bridge in the 1960s and 1970s. Book reviews highlight studies about the ancient peoples of the Great Basin, the Mountain Meadow Massacre, the Catholic Church in Utah, art in the West, women and education, military life in the West, and two of Utah’s most colorful characters; Harry Alonzo Longabaugh—better known as The Sundance Kid—and William H. Smart, a latter-day pioneer and leader in the Uinta Basin.

Authorization by Congress in 1955 of the Colorado River Storage Project included a provision requiring protective measures to keep impounded waters from harming Rainbow Bridge National Monument. Our first article discusses the four sites considered feasible for construction of a structure to block waters from Lake Powell from reaching the boundaries of the monument after completion of Glen Canyon Dam. But as the waters of Lake Powell inundated one site after another eliminating the feasibility of building the protective structures, and as the lake waters extended under the world famous bridge, the fight to protect Rainbow Bridge returned to the halls of Congress and reached all the way to the United States Supreme Court.

Photographs of workers digging a sewer line on Ogden's 25th Street near the Ogden Academy east of Washington Avenue, November 6, 1913

Utah State Historical Society

Even before man began to record historical events, mystics and magicians awed, bewildered, and entertained their fellow human beings. Those who appeared to possess supernaturalistic powers could also be found in Utah. Skeptics and detractors challenged those who performed magical feats that others could not. Among these detractors were mystics and magicians themselves. Our second article examines the conflict between Harry Waite and Oscar Eliason in Salt Lake City during the 1890s and in doing so reveals much about the world of magic and the nuances and peculiarities of mystics, their practices, and beliefs.

If magic could seem intangible and fleeting, water is tangible and essential to the permanence of life and growth in Utah. Our third article delves into the complex world of irrigation and allocation of water and the systems that Utahns implemented to manage them. Nineteenth-century Utahns expended as much energy and time in building and maintaining a viable irrigation system as they did in planting, tending, and harvesting their crops. In addition, as the showdown at Geddes Gulch suggests, political and legal battles were never far from the Utah farmer and his crops.

Our final article for 2009 takes us from the realm of conflict and disharmony to a world of tranquility and ease found in jazz presented by the Utah DJs who were dedicated to providing an original American musical genre to radio listeners in the post-World War II years. A century after pioneers arrived to establish their homes in the valleys of Utah, much had changed. This change is nowhere more apparent than in the acceptance and popularity of jazz music.

These four articles and the books reviewed in this issue offer unusual and important perspectives on Utah and its history. As the two photographs above suggest, even with such a mundane task as ditch digging, a slightly altered viewpoint can reveal different but important insights to the discerning eye.

ON THE COVER: Setting a telephone pole at 28th Street and Washington Avenue in Ogden. UTAHSTATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY