Images of America

The San Rafael Swell is an anticline, or a geological uplift, that originally looked like an oval bowl turned upside down. Over time it has been carved into castle-like formations and deep canyons by erosive conditions. This landscape seemed so formidable to early cartographers...

By: Lynn Arave and Ray Boren Newest book in Arcadia's Images of America series. Great Salt Lake is bleak yet beautiful, mysterious and alluring, an endangered "dead sea" vital to life. Explorer Jedediah Smith, surrounded by a vast wilderness, realized this felt to him...

North of Price, Utah, Nine Mile Canyon slashes through the West Tavaputs Plateau and erodes its way east to the Green River, Utah. In 1847, settlements began in Utah along the Wasatch Front. The rangeland was soon taken, and stockmen pushed up Spanish Fork...

By Dalton Gackle Settled by miners and Mormons after the Civil War and incorporated in 1884, Park City grew into one of the world’s most prestigious mining camps. Known primarily for its richness in silver, Park City miners also extracted lead, zinc, gold, and...

Astronaut John Glenn used Utah’s Bonneville Salt Flats as a landmark from space, but on Earth, amateur motorsports devotees have used the blistering hot, flat land as a speed laboratory for more than a century. On August 22, 1949, the hot rodders joined 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 cargo of mail, is...

Images of America Series. Coal Camps of Eastern Utah Nestled between the Wasatch Plateau and the Book Cliff Mountains, hundreds of feet underground, vast coal deposits make up the heart of Utah's coal country. This high-grade bituminous coal attracted the Denver and Rio Grande...

Between 1890 and 1930, Salt Lake City experienced some of the most rapid and profound changes of any city in U.S. history. In its pioneer period, from the beginning of white settlement in 1847 to about 1890, the city struggled against outside pressures to...

The Salt Lake City Cemetery was established in September 1847 when George Wallace, who arrived with the first company of Mormon pioneers two months prior, buried his young daughter on a picturesque hillside above the Salt Lake Valley. It has since grown to become...

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 luring them on, railroad...

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 from the 1860s until...

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. Within a decade, the...

By Lynn Arave Author Lynn Arave has compiled more than 190 photographs, including many vintage images from the Wasatch Mountain Club to showcase the Uinta Mountains, known as the “roof” of Utah, with elevations exceeding 13,000 feet above sea level. These mountains, essentially “the...

By Tiffany Taylor Step back in time and experience the breathtaking beauty of Zion National Park through the lens of history with the Zion National Park Historic Postcards collection from Images of America. This captivating compilation, published in 2008, offers a unique glimpse into...

Stretching some 160 miles, from Nephi on the south to Grace, Idaho, on the north, their elevations rise to nearly 12,000 feet above sea level. Mount Nebo, at the range’s south end, is a mammoth, triple-peaked monolith at a top elevation of 11,928 feet,...

By Colleen McDannell In 1776, two Mexican Franciscans trekked into what is now the state of Utah. While they said the rosary and offered litanies to the saints, they did not linger in what was to them unknown territory. It would take almost 100...

By Royce Allen and Gary Willden South Davis County is bounded by the majestic Wasatch Mountain Range to the east and the Great Salt Lake to the west. Bountiful, Centerville, Farmington, and Kaysville are the major population centers--all originating as early Mormon settlements. Concerned...

On October 26, 1862, Col. Edward P. Connor and the 3rd California Volunteers set up Camp Douglas for the purpose of protecting the overland mail and telegraph routes between Nevada and Wyoming. This began a long history of a U.S. military presence in the...

By John Sillito and Sarah Langsdon In 1845, Miles Goodyear founded a settlement at Fort Buenaventura, located near the confluence of the Weber and Ogden Rivers. The area was renamed Ogden in 1851 by Mormon Church president Brigham Young after Peter Skene Ogden, a...

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 town, the railroad became...