In This Issue

On September 1, 1911, a photographer captured an image of several boys playing in the water at Pioneer Park in Salt Lake City. Behind the apparent simplicity of this photograph, our spring 2014 cover, are many complexities. Who were these children? What urban systems and social movements gave them access to a clean public park? These questions are answered somewhat by the knowledge that during the early 1900s, reformers in Utah were engaged in the City Beautiful movement—a major part of which was the creation of playgrounds—and in 1912, the children’s area at Pioneer Park underwent great improvements. 1 Just so, it is worth asking about the context surrounding even the most seemingly mundane things and events.

The anchor article in this issue examines the socioeconomic, religious, and ethnic struggles behind the development of Salt Lake City’s sanitation infrastructure. As Utah’s capital city moved into the industrial era, its citizens suffered because of inadequate water, sewer, and garbage services. Civic officials answered such problems in the late 1800s and early 1900s by building water- works and a sewer system, among other things; however, those improvements disproportionately favored certain neighborhoods. Salt Lake’s public health reforms took on an ethnic dimension because the portion of the city that was most neglected, its Westside, was increasingly inhabited during these years by immigrants from Asia, Latin America, and southern Europe. Many affluent Salt Lakers reacted to Westside conditions by judging the people of that area to be “unclean, unhealthy, and un-American.”

Our second article asks about the “ingredients” that compose the centerpiece of a traditional holiday meal—the turkey—and how turkey-raising in Utah went from a small-scale activity focused on pest control and holiday markets to a thriving industry. Improvements in technology, transportation, and business practices (the establishment of modern processing plants or the invention of bulk feeders, for instance) had a significant part in the growth of turkey farming in the state. The support and direction provided by growers’ organizations, county extension programs, and the Utah State Agricultural College likewise aided the industry. But this story also had a very human element: several key individuals influenced Utah turkey farming, and as the twentieth century progressed, those growers who stayed in the poultry business learned to adapt to change and difficulty.

At this printing, the world has just celebrated the conclusion of the Sochi 2014 Olympics. Just over a century ago, a young man from Utah enjoyed a fantastic victory at the Stockholm 1912 Olympics. Alma Richards was still a relative newcomer to the sport of high jump in 1912, and he was a dark horse at the games. Yet he won. A bit of reportage about Richards’s accomplishment led to a story of how this Mormon boy called for divine help as he made his Olympic leap—and that story took on a life of its own, especially as Salt Lake City prepared to host its own Olympics. Our third article unravels the complicated story of Alma Richards’s Olympic prayer and asks us to consider the uses of history.

The final article in this issue also tackles something of a historical myth: the notion that women formed the majority of school teachers in the Old West. Besides delicate eastern girls who came west to be schoolmarms, this article argues, plenty of men led classrooms in the nineteenth-century West. Utah had a particularly interesting mix of male and female teachers, one complicated by religion and changed by the passage of time. All told, this issue of Utah Historical Quarterly prompts us to look carefully at familiar stories and ordinary things.

Thomas G. Alexander, “Cooperation, Conflict, and Compromise: Women, Men, and the Environment in Salt Lake City, 1890–1930,” BYU Studies 35, no. 1 (1995): 19–23.

COVER: Pioneer Park, Salt Lake City, September 1911. UTAH STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY IN THIS ISSUE (ABOVE): A crowd of people gathered at a Salt Lake City produce market near the Growers’ Exchange, August 1913. UTAH STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY