In This Issue

One of Utah’s greatest historical treasures is the Shipler Photo Collection of more than one hundred thousand photo negatives in the Utah State Historical Society library. These photographs document Utah life from 1890 when J. W. Shipler arrived in Salt Lake City until 1988 when the four generation family enterprise closed its doors. Our thanks to James William Shipler (1849-1937), Harry Shipler (1878-1961), George William Shipler (1906-1956), and William Hollis Shipler (1929-2010), for their rich visual legacy. Their photographs have appeared in nearly every issue of the Utah Historical Quarterly, including this one, during the last quarter century. Digital copies of many of the Shipler photographs are available online at the Utah State History website.

Our cover photograph of Harry Shipler astride his bicycle recognizes the emerging importance of the bicycle in the early 1900s, the subject of our concluding article in this issue. The photo also commemorates one of Utah’s outstanding documentary photographers whose motto was “I’ll go anywhere to photograph anything.”

Harry Shipler on his bicycle. The Utah State Historical Society has more than one hundred thousand photographs in its Shipler collection—many taken by biking enthusiast Harry Shipler who was the second of four generations who operated the family photography business in Salt Lake City.

SHIPLER COLLECTION, UTAH STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY.

But before we mount our bicycles for a ride through the economic, political, and social implications of Salt Lake City’s “bike craze” of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, there is much more to discover about Utah’s ancient and more recent past.

Our first article takes us to a Southern Utah location where North Creek joins the Escalante River. At North Creek Shelter, located a few miles west of the town of Escalante, Brigham Young University archaeologists undertook a four-year study from 2004 until 2008 to understand the eleven thousand year human association with the site. Their study yielded important information on the earliest known human presence in Escalante Valley and on the Colorado Plateau. From this recent study we learn more about the early peoples of this region —the foods they ate, their occupation patterns, the shelter they obtained, the tools and weapons they utilized, their hunting and farming endeavors, trade with other groups, their burial customs, and the rock art they painted. However, with these new findings, the authors caution against assumptions that we have learned all there is to know about the ancient peoples and remind us that “…synthesizing archaeological findings and insights are in a perennial state of flux.”

When Juan Chacon was found dead in March 1914 with three bullet holes in his body, a series of events began with accusations, pursuit, confrontation, the brink of an Indian war, shootings, arrest, and trial that ended in what many would have considered an unforeseen outcome. Chacon was murdered while returning to his home in New Mexico with a large sum of money earned as a herder in southeastern Utah. Our second article outlines the troubles that had plagued the region, the murder of Chacon, the pursuit and arrest of Tse-ne-gat, and his subsequent trial in Denver, Colorado, with its national attention brought by the involvement of the Indian Rights Association.

These three photographs taken on April 8, 1904, show the exterior and interior of the Meredith and Guthrie Bicycle store located at 333 South Main Street in Salt Lake City.

SHIPLER COLLECTION, UTAH STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY.

Flags have always symbolized patriotism and have been a part of Utah’s history since the arrival of the 1847 pioneers. With Utah’s entry into the Union in 1896 as the forty-fifth state, citizens produced what was claimed to be the largest United States Flag in the nation’s history. The flag hung from the ceiling of the Salt Lake Tabernacle during the 1896 celebration then graced the south wall of the Salt Lake Temple until about 1903. Our third article recounts the production of the flag, its role in the celebrations, and the process by which Utah’s star was added to the field of forty-four stars. The nation’s forty-five star flag flew until 1907 when Oklahoma became the forty-sixth state in the Union.

Our Summer issue offers an eclectic collection with something for everyone— those who seek to unearth Utah’s ancient past, those who enjoy a murder mystery shaped by racial and ethnic tensions, those who appreciate the enthusiastic patriotism of our forefathers, and those who seek understanding of how past community leaders addressed the conflicting demands of an urban society in which the bicycle rolled forth as a popular means of transportation and recreation. Many of the same issues persist in our own time. Are their insights for today? You be the judge.