In This Issue

In late October 1862, some eight hundred soldiers of the Third Regiment of California Volunteers under the command of Colonel Patrick Edward Connor broke camp on the west side of the Jordan River and marched through Salt Lake City enroute to a site on the east bench of the valley where they established Camp Douglas named for the late Illinois Senator Stephen A. Douglas. In time, the camp became Fort Douglas and for the last one hundred and fifty years has played a key role in the history of Utah, the American West, and the nation. Connor and his men were disappointed that they were not sent to battle the armies of the Confederacy. Instead they were in Utah to keep open the newly completed transcontinental telegraph, the overland mail and transportation route connecting California with the rest of the nation, and to keep watch on Brigham Young and the Utah Mormons. A little more than four years earlier, another force of United States soldiers made their way through an abandoned Salt Lake City to establish Camp Floyd forty miles southwest of the City as part of a negotiated compromise to end the Utah War. Our first article for this issue considers the 1857-1858 clash as Utah’s first civil war and describes the linkages and connections between that conflict and the American Civil War. One of the connections is that many of those men who arrived in 1858 as part of Johnston’s army became prominent participants during the Civil War and their experience in Utah helped shape their attitudes and conduct during the four-year war between the states.

Our second article examines the caldron of issues that made Utah’s experience during the American Civil War unique, in many aspects, from that of the rest of the nation. It considers such questions as the relationship between Abraham Lincoln and Brigham Young, the interaction of Connor’s men with local citizens, the mistrust and animosity between Brigham Young and Patrick Connor, and the reasons for the bloody battle or massacre in January 1863 at Bear River that left twenty-three casualties among the soldiers and several hundred Northwestern Shoshone men, women, and children dead.

Fort Douglas is Utah’s most prominent reminder of the Civil War even though when the war ended in 1865, the fort was still in its infancy. In subsequent years, stone then brick buildings were constructed. The fort reflected the United States military presence in Utah. Soldiers left from the fort to participate in the nation’s armed conflicts including the Spanish American War, the Philippine Insurrection, the conflict along the United States Mexican border, World Wars I and II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam Conflict. Our third article in this issue reports the involvement of Utahns in the concluding battle of World War I, the Meuse-Argonne Offensive near Verdun in northeastern France.

Our final article for 2012 takes an insightful look at the nature of large cattle ranches in southeastern Utah and the reasons for their departure from the state during the last decade of the nineteenth century.

As we commemorate with this issue two important sesquicentennials—the establishment of Fort Douglas and the American Civil War, it is interesting to reflect on what the area included in the original Camp Douglas has become. A military presence remains at the fort with active Army Reserve units, but much of the original fort has been absorbed during various phases of expansion by the University of Utah. During the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics, the Fort became the Athletes Village with the fort’s bandstand the center for celebrations by the athletics. Subsequently the Olympic village became housing for University of Utah students. Historic buildings have been preserved throughout the fort and the fort has been recognized by the National Park Service as a National Historic Landmark. The historic Officer’s Club has become the location for the annual Utah State History Conference. Surrounding the parade ground, on the south, the Fort Douglas Military Museum, housed in two barracks buildings, preserves the history of the fort and Utah’s military tradition. To the east, the houses that were accommodations for officers now serve a variety of University connected functions. On the north side of the parade ground, the former commander’s house and other buildings are also used by the University with the American West Center and the Center for American Indian Languages housed side by side.

COVER: Soldiers at Fort Douglas—May 24, 1917. SHIPLER COLLECTION, UTAH STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY. IN THIS ISSUE: An aerial view of Fort Douglas taken in the early 1950s. UTAH STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY.