In This Issue

The Utah Historical Quarterly has historically seen itself as a state journal that explores Utah history in the regional context of the American West. For all of the focus on Utah history, the UHQ sought to address frameworks and subjects beyond the state’s geopolitical boundaries to those across the Great Basin, Colorado Plateau, and greater Intermountain West.

Over the last ninety years, the journal has published articles that have variously looked at Utah history as an entity in itself and others that have placed it within a regional context. Both approaches can lead to fine works of history. But we are committed to the idea that to deeply understand Utah, readers must interact with a host of overlapping subjects and geographical contexts, often offered in combination with history’s allied fields (geography, archeology, cultural studies, and others). With this in mind, the editorial team, with approval of the Advisory Board of Editors, revised our editorial statement to affirm our commitment to a regional, interdisciplinary approach to Utah history. This statement will be published in the inside front cover of each issue.

In the twenty-first century, with the wide availability of information, the fracturing and specialization of subject matter, and, even, the loss of faith in a shared body of knowledge, the UHQ aspires as we have done since 1928 to bring you evidentiary, peer-reviewed history that spans across all regions and pertains to all groups and communities that make Utah home. To continue to make that happen, we are pleased to announce the creation of the Miriam B. Murphy / Thomas G. Alexander Editorial Fellow. In partnership with the History Department at the University of Utah and the Charles Redd Center for Western Studies at Brigham Young University, this academic-year award is offered to a deserving candidate enrolled in the University of Utah’s history graduate program. This year the Miriam B. Murphy Editorial Fellow is Alexandria Waltz, and we are currently accepting applications for the Thomas G. Alexander Editorial Fellow to work alongside UHQ staff during the 2018–2019 academic year. For more on the fellowship and its namesakes, see pages 69-71.

We are deeply grateful to the History Department at the University of Utah and to the Redd Center at Brigham Young University for their financial assistance and partnership to make the Fellow award possible. Fundraising in the years to come will be needed, and if the pursuit and publishing of exceptional history interests you, I would be delighted to speak to you about financial contributions to this annual editorial appointment. The Fellow award is but one area of close collaboration between the journal and the state’s institutions of higher learning.

Finally, before I introduce this issue’s articles, I invite each of you to take part in our 2018 annual statewide theme and conference, Transportation and Movement. In recognition of the upcoming commemoration of America’s first transcontinental railroad in May 1869, the Utah State Historical Society aims to highlight this singular national historical event and the centrality of transportation and movement in Utah and western history. Archaeology and Preservation Month in May, with its associated partnership events held across Utah, will center on this theme, as will a host of other events and exhibitions sponsored or supported by the Society. The year culminates with the 66th annual Utah History Conference to be held at the Cultural Celebration Center on September 27–28. There, scholars, academics, public historians, local historians, educators, film documentarians, book dealers, and people interested in history will explore the latest scholarship, writing, and sources on this theme and other aspects of Utah history. I thank all of you for your participation at past conferences and, more broadly, for your love of and interest in what we do at the Society. By attending the conference and lectures, reading the UHQ, and perusing online materials, I hope you see the value that the Society brings to the study and public consumption of history in Utah.

The essays in this issue bring attention to topics that will be intimately familiar to some readers. In the nineteenth century, overland pioneers and travelers to Salt Lake City frequently passed through Mountain Dell, located as it was along the emigrants’ road. Today, it is a fly-by place in Parley’s Canyon along the Interstate 80 corridor where golfers and Nordic skiers go for recreation. Our first essay contextualizes the changes that occurred there, from a way station and village community with a school, post office, and other amenities, to Salt Lake City water works that displaced local residents on behalf of watershed protection.

Some readers may remember, and even possibly participated in, the antiwar protests of the Vietnam era. The second essay centers on Stephen Holbrook, a young Utahan inspired by his participation in the Freedom Summer Project in Mississippi, who led antiwar demonstrations in his home state. The work published here examines the cultural and religious factors that contributed to Holbrook’s world view that emphasized cooperation and collaboration over antagonism and violence. The Utah scene and the movement Holbrook orchestrated, with its relatively few violent disturbances, complicate popular perceptions of protests nationwide.

Our final essays reflect on the local histories that surround us all. In this issue, spurred on by local leader and Manila, Utah, resident RaNae Wilde, we offer reflections on a county and its communities that have traditionally received little love in the historical literature about Utah. The place: Daggett County. The occasion: the county’s centennial commemoration. As the smallest county in the state’s geopolitical configuration, Daggett is sparsely populated and geographically isolated, at least from Utah, since it is more associated with and easily accessible from Wyoming’s Green River basin. Our third essays reflects on the oft-ignored themes associated with Daggett, as well as it historical, cultural, and political position in the Intermountain West. Finally, we publish a review essay that evaluates the work and contribution of one of the most ubiquitous publishers of local history, Arcadia Publishing. From works on local communities by local authors, Arcadia fills a niche for histories that are familiar and reflect the nostalgia of a people.

Brad Westwood Publisher/Editor