Archives News

October marked the 20th anniversary of the formal opening of the current home of the Utah State Archives and Records Service at 346 S. Rio Grande Street. The anniversary gives us at the Archives the opportunity to reflect on how past visions of a purpose-built facility for the Archives brought us to where we are today. The Archives first became

After the Salt Lake High School was established in 1890, it operated in a number of different locations before settling into the former home of the University of Deseret, located on the present-day site of West High School. In 1912, a building was completed on the west side of the same block to house the companion Technical High School, which

This is what the Utah State Government looked like just one year after the end of World War II. The population of the state was roughly 638,000 and the State Capitol was still the primary office building for state government. Governor Herbert Maw stands at the front of the crowd on the steps of the Utah State Capitol. Along with

Long-time Provo residents may have felt a certain sense of loss several months ago as they watched the demolition of the familiar Provo City Center that housed city government for over 50 years. Completed in 1972, the complex was Provo’s first purpose-built city hall since the city government was formed in 1851. As with many city halls, the building was

There is a particular sense of connection to our history when we see a practice from the past that has lived on into the present, continuing to fulfill a function, but carrying with it a sense of continuity and a memory of where we have come from. When Archive staff members Heidi Steed and Alan Barnett recently visited Provo City

We typically think of black and white or warm sepia-toned prints when we think of historical photographs. But color photography has been around long enough for color images to be considered historical as well. The Utah State Archives recently received a collection of over 30,000 35mm color slides from the Utah State Historic Preservation Office, a state agency that assists

Here along the Wasatch Front, we periodically get some pretty wild windstorms. Some do more damage than others, so some are more memorable than others. In September 2020 we had a particularly strong storm that uprooted hundreds of trees and caused prolonged power outages. Coming as it did on the heels of Salt Lake’s largest recorded earthquake and in the

The traditional function of a map is to convey information about geography in a two-dimensional way and on a scale that is comprehensible to the user. Maps document relationships of places and geographical features to one another and allow for calculation of distances. They can show lakes, roads, rivers, towns, and even invisible jurisdictional boundaries. But the richest maps are

Those who have used Polk City Directories in their research know how valuable they can be in tracking individuals, institutions, and businesses over time. But it’s hard to know exactly how the directories were assembled and why information is presented as it is. A receipt found among records from the Murray City School District sheds just a sliver of light on

Among records recently transferred to the Utah State Archives from the Ogden School District were two seemingly unremarkable 1960s-era photo albums from Pingree Elementary School. Despite the plain covers, the photos in the album revealed that Pingree Elementary was not just another school. The photographs provide a striking and human window into one of the important Black communities in Utah