Utah History Books

Gilsonite is a solid hydrocarbon mined in vertical veins in southern Uintah County, Utah. It is found in veins anywhere from a foot to twenty-two feet in width, and a depth of a few feet up to 2,000 feet. The...

The Pony Express stands out in the history of the American West, memorable and captivating for the romance and adventure it evokes. The image of the intrepid young rider on a fast horse, crossing mountain and desert with his precious...

Ghosts Towns of the West is filled with photographs, maps, history, and detailed directions to find the best ghost towns to linger in the wake of the Old West. Ghost Towns of the West blazes a trail through the dusty crossroads and...

“John Wesley Powell: explorer, writer, geologist, anthropologist, land planner, bureaucrat. Which one do we focus on?” This is the question author James M. Aton poses at the beginning of his biography of Powell, though he soon decides that it is...

This well-researched biography of the life and controversial death of Robert LeRoy Parker, a.k.a. Butch Cassidy, is a journey across the late-nineteenth-century American West as we follow Cassidy's exploits in Colorado, Wyoming, and Utah, where he made his name as...

By: Charles L. KellerWhen the first company of Mormon settlers arrived in the Great Salt Lake Valley in July 1847, it was immediately apparent that their survival depended upon what resources they found in the mountains surrounding them. The Great...

By: Michael Rutter Massacres, mayhem, and mischief fill the pages of Outlaw Tales of Utah. Meet the Wild Bunch, outlaws who sought refuge between heists hanging out and hiding out in Utah. Butch Cassidy, its leader, once paid a farmer's...

By: SueAnn Martell and the Western Mining and Railroad Museum In 1880, the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad was hard-pressed to find a suitable rail route from Grand Junction to Salt Lake City. With the coal deposits of eastern Utah...

Copublished with the Utah State Historical Society. Affiliated with the Utah Division of State History, Utah Department of Heritage & Arts.In time for the centennial of the United States’s entry into World War I, this collection of seventeen essays explores...

Salt Lake City’s oldest residential historic district is a neighborhood known as the Avenues. During the late nineteenth century this area was home to many of the most influential citizens of Salt Lake City. Built from 1860 until 1930, it...

The Story of Clear Lake, Utah By Venetta Bond Kelsey This book tells the story of a little railroad, farming & ranching community situated in the middle of the Black Rock Desert and Pahvant Valley of south central Utah.  Clear...

East of Utah's domed state capitol and near downtown Salt Lake City, a residential district sharply climbs the foothills of the Wasatch Range. The neighborhood is known as "The Avenues." Settlement of the oldest portion of the area took place...

The half century between statehood in 1896 and the end of World War II in 1945 was a period of transformation and transition for Utah. This book interprets those profound changes, revealing sweeping impacts on both institutions and ordinary people....

An Architectural Travel Guide to Utah invites visitors and other explorers of Utah to see the state’s history, material culture, settlement, and natural landscape through the lens of its buildings. With more than 600 buildings as examples, this guide takes readers through Utah’s...

The Transcontinental Railroad in Utah shows the impact of the large number of new arrivals on the population and economy of Utah, as well as the impact of the people of Utah on those newly arrived. This fascinating history includes...

By Eileen Hallet In the late 1840s, the new frontier west of the Missouri River opened its floodgates to opportunity and adventure. In a new land, where men were lonely and women scarce, prostitutes poured in to ply their trade...

Representing lawmakers and lawbreakers, artists and adventurers or scholars and activists, the women of Utah defied stereotypes. At the crossroads of the West, they found new challenges and opportunities to forge their own paths. Emma Dean explored the Rocky Mountains...

Shortly after the International Smelter offered economic salvation to Tooele's struggling desert community, the Tooele Valley Railroad became the town artery. Though originally built in 1908 to connect the smelter to the Union Pacific and Western Pacific lines west of...

From the earliest days of settlement, South Temple was Salt Lake's most prestigious street. In 1857, William Staines built the Devereaux House, Salt Lake's first of many mansions. The once-bustling Union Pacific Depot eventually found itself increasingly isolated. Downtown's "gleaming...

Settling in an isolated desert valley, Salt Lake City's Mormon pioneers laid out a city grid and constructed permanent structures to create their version of Zion. They brought with them their architects, builders, tools, and experience gained in the Midwest....

This is a detailed account of Lee's captivity among the Comanches in the 1850's and his escape through the mountains back to white civilization. The story is full of encounters with alligators, snakes, and panthers, as well as hostile Comanches....