In This Issue

As educators, public officials, and parents struggle to define and develop the best educational curriculum for our children, the word “relevance” is often employed to determine what time, resources, and effort should be given to any subject. Our students learn about a variety of subjects in the fields of mathematics, the sciences, languages, social studies, arts, and humanities. Certainly the pleasure and joy earned in studying any subject is reward enough—history being no exception. But if relevancy is a relevant concern in developing our public curriculum, is there relevancy in the study of history? Historian Robert Archibald answers the question with a resounding “Yes” as he argues, “So there is a point to history, for history is a process of facilitating conversations in which we consider what we have done well, what we have done poorly, and how we can do better, conversations that are a prelude to action.”

Our first article for 2007 considers what Utah state officials have done well to attain a triple A credit rating—one that only four other states in the nation can claim. The article serves as a guide for current and future state leaders on issues of funding and public debt.But it also has relevance for individuals who struggle with personal debt and place Utah first among all fifty states in the number of its citizens who declare personal bankruptcy.

As hostilities developed between Utes and Mormon settlers and Navajos and federal officials during the 1860s culminating in the Black Hawk War and the Long Walk by an estimated three-quarters of the Navajo people from their homeland in the Four Corners region to Bosque Redondo near Fort Sumner in eastern New Mexico, another group of Native Americans, the Southern Paiutes, were caught between these two tragic events. Their largely forgotten story is recounted in our second article in this issue.

Completed in October 1861,the transcontinental telegraph connected the Atlantic and Pacific coasts rendering the eighteen-month-old Pony Express obsolete and increasing demands for completion of a transcontinental railroad. Construction of the transcontinental telegraph was a monumental under taking that demanded leader ship, resourcefulness and effort to obtain the thousands of telegraph poles needed to construct the line, and willing laborers to set the poles and string the wire. Our third article describes the role that Mormon convert-emigrants from England played in the construction of the transcontinental telegraph.

Defense and military spending have remained a staple of Utah’s economy since the end of World War II. The story of the establishment of the Thiokol facility west of Brigham City in Box Elder County is told in the fourth article. The solid fuel rocket engines developed at Thiokol were critical to the development of America’s missile system during the Cold War and the nation’s pioneering space shuttle program.

Our last article is a tribute to Everett L. Cooley who served as director of the Utah State Historical Society from 1963 to 1969.As an Honorary Life Member and Fellow of the Utah State Historical Society, he continued to support and promote the research and writing of Utah history until his passing on July 2, 2006.