The nation’s first transcontinental railroad was completed at Promontory, Utah. On May 10, 1869, a team of Chinese workers for the Central Pacific Railroad and a team of Irish workers for the Union Pacific Railroad lined up the final rails and support timbers. In Short Officials from the two railroad companies drove four ceremonial spikes into the rails to join the …

When the railroad came to Utah, it connected communities and resources here to markets across the United States. Railroads opened the door for businesspeople to make a lot of money from things like mining. In Short From the 1890s through the 1920s, many people in Utah made money through mining and other industrial activities instead of farming. All of those …

Women in Utah were the first in the nation to exercise the right to vote. This happened in 1870–fifty years before the 19th Amendment secured voting rights for women. In short But suffrage is not a simple story. Women’s suffrage in Utah was tangled up with larger national political debates about women’s rights and polygamy. In fact, between 1870 and …

You’re probably reading this on a computer, maybe using the Internet. Did you know that some of the inventions that made that possible started in Utah?  In short In the late 1960s, a few people in Utah had big ideas about how to make computers more usable, especially with graphics. Then in 1969, the University of Utah became the fourth …

After World War II (WWII) the United States and the Soviet Union (USSR) changed from being wartime allies to postwar enemies in the Cold War, which lasted from 1945-1991. In short The United States and the Soviet Union competed to spread their ideas around the world and be more powerful than the other. Both built up their militaries and nuclear …

During World War II, the United States forced over 120,000 Japanese American citizens and legal residents to leave their homes and live in internment camps. The reason? Many Americans thought that people of Japanese descent might help Japan harm the U.S.  One of these camps was in a windy, dusty desert near Delta, Utah. Its name was Topaz. In short …

World War II (WWII) lasted from 1939-1945. In addition to fighting around the world, WWII brought huge changes to the home front (the people who stayed in the U.S.). In Short Women in Utah gained many new opportunities for working outside the home, and they built up traditional women’s volunteer networks to assist the war effort. Women were a vital …

During the Great Depression, the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) brought thousands of young men from across the country to work in Utah. This New Deal program gave young men jobs building useful conservation, recreation, and other public works projects across the state. In Short Roads, dams, campgrounds, and hundreds of other things that the CCC built in the 1930s are …

Between 1914 and 1919, Europe was engulfed in the Great War, later called World War I (WWI). In this war, Britain, France, and Russia (the Allies) joined forces against Germany, Italy, and Austria-Hungary (the Central Powers). In Short This brutal conflict eventually threatened the United States too. After the  U.S. joined the Allies in 1917, over 21,000 men from Utah …

When members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) arrived in Utah in 1847, some of its leading members practiced polygamy, a family in which one man has more than one wife. In Short Other Americans did not widely know that members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (sometimes known as Mormons or LDS) …