In This Issue

The cover for our Spring issue depicts in the foreground two unidentified military veterans making their way through downtown Salt Lake City on May 15, 1971. The two men, one a long-haired Vietnam War veteran, the other, an eighty-year-old veteran of World War I proudly wearing three medals on the front of his jacket, march under a banner that reads “Utah Veterans Against the War.” The veterans, and hundreds of Utahns accompanying them, ended their march on that warm spring day at Pioneer Park where they listened to several anti-Vietnam War speeches, including one by the eighty-four-year-old great-grandmother Jessie Greenhalgh Musser.

These challenging years of the late 1960s and early 1970s when the Vietnam War occupied the nation and Utah’s attention are the focus of the concluding article in this issue. Patriotic Americans stood on both sides—many supporting the nation’s involvement in the Southeast Asian conflict, others opposing the war that drew more than three million American military personnel to far off Vietnam between 1965 and 1973. The first protest in Utah against the war took place in April 1965, less than a month after the first combat troops arrived in Vietnam. The last protest occurred on the eve of the ceasefire agreement signed in Paris on January 27, 1973, that paved the way for the last American troops to leave Vietnam two months later. The University of Utah campus was the epicenter for the shock waves of controversy that rolled across Utah during those troubled years.

As University of Utah students and faculty struggled with the issue of war, they united to celebrate the completion of the new J. Willard Marriott Library in 1968. Wallace Stegner, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and other awards gave the dedicatory address. Stegner, who was born in Iowa, came to Salt Lake City in 1921 graduating from East High School in 1925 and the University of Utah in 1930. Although not a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Stegner became acquainted with Mormons during his sojourn in Utah and many of his writings including Mormon Country (1942) and The Gathering of Zion (1964) cover Mormon subjects with sympathy and insight. Our first article in this issue examines Stegner’s experience with Mormons. He did not consider himself an outcast, but the recipient of warmth and goodwill noting: “I have never ceased to be grateful for what they gave us when what they gave mattered a great deal; I was never tempted to adopt their beliefs, [but] I could never write about them…except as a friend.”

The second article for this issue returns to the subject of irrigation in Utah as it examines the late nineteenth-century Abraham Irrigation Project in Millard County. Utilizing water from the Sevier River, officials of the irrigation company sought to expand the population of West Millard county by several hundred. Difficulties compounded when two irrigation companies struggled to work together on the project in the face of the national economic downturn brought on by the Panic of 1893 and the limited water available for the ambitious project.

The photographic essay of the Utah State Hospital in Provo, offers seldom seen pictures of patients, staff, and the accommodations of a facility that opened in Provo in 1885 as the Utah Territorial Insane Asylum. The institution became known as the Utah State Mental Hospital in 1903, and the Utah State Hospital in 1927. The photographs and accompanying text help us understand this important and sometimes overlooked element of our history while remembering the care rendered by dedicated doctors and staff in the service of others.

Once again, these four articles remind us of the great variety of human experiences—from expanding agricultural and economic activities through technology and the utilization of natural resources, to care for others, protest, and reconciliation.

(ABOVE): Radical leader, Jerry Rubin speaks to University of Utah Students, February 8, 1970. STEPHEN HOLBROOK COLLECTION, UTAH STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY