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Educational Material/Non-Commercial
UINTAH COUNTY BRIEF HISTORY
County: 3-D Map
Author: Craig Fuller
Source: University of Utah, Media Collection
K-12 Educational Material/Non Commercial
Area: 4,487 square miles; population: 22,211 (in 1990); county seat:
Vernal; origin of county name: after the Uinta-Ats Utes; principal
cities/towns: Vernal (6,644), Maeser (1,850), Naples (1,334),
Ballard (644), Jensen (400), LaPoint (250), Whiterocks (200), Fort
Duchesne (200); economy: cattle, hay and alfalfa, lumber, oil, gas,
and oil shale; points of interest: Dinosaur National Monument, Utah
Field House of Natural History in Vernal, Steinaker Reservoir, Ouray
National Wildlife Refuge, Stewart Lake Waterfowl Management Area,
Red Fleet Reservoir.
The geography of Uintah County diverse and includes the high
mountain terrain of the Uinta Mountains, the fertile Ashley Valley,
a significant portion of Dinosaur National Monument-including the
quarry- and the Green River, which bisects the county from the
northeast to the southwest and forms the boundary between Carbon
County and Uintah County. Fort Duchesne, which was established as a
military post by the United States Army in 1886 and operated until
1913, is not the headquarters for the Ute Tribe.
Uintah County is located in the central portion of the Uinta Basin,
which extends sixty miles into western Colorado. The northern rim of
the basin is formed by the Uinta Mountains, the western rim by the
Wasatch Mountains, and the southern rim by the Roan and Book cliffs.
The basin is the geological remains of prehistoric Uinta Lake,
formed during the late Tertiary period, the same period when
sediment was deposited in the lake bottom to form gilsonite, oil
shale, tar sands, and oil. Ashley Creek and the White, Uinta, and
Green rivers are the major streams in the county. The Green, the
largest of the four, slices through the central portion of the
county.
Prehistoric Indian sites suggest that the Uinta Basin was inhabited
thousands of years ago by Archaic and more recently by Fremont
peoples. In historic times it was part of the Utes' domain. The
first white men in the area were Fathers Dominguez and Escalante who
traveled through the Uinta Basin in 1776 searching for a land route
to Monterey, California. In his diary Escalante called the basin "a
fine plain abounding in pasturage and fertile, arable land, provided
it were irrigated." Nearly fifty years later American and French
trappers found the Basin rich in beaver and other wildlife. In
1831-32 Antoine Robidoux, a French trapper licensed by the Mexican
government (Utah was part of Mexico until 1848), built a small
trading post near present-day Whiterocks where trappers could trade
beaver pelts for supplies. The post was abandoned in 1844 because of
difficulties with the Indians.
In 1861 Brigham Young sent a small party to explore the basin for
possible settlement. They reported "that all that section of country
lying between the Wasatch Mountains and the eastern boundary of the
territory, and south of Green River country, was one vast contiguity
of waste and measurably valueless." With this report, Young decided
not to send settlers there.
That same year, President Abraham Lincoln created the Uintah Indian
Reservation, thus beginning the relocation of many Utah and Colorado
Indians to the Uinta Basin. In the 1880s the Uncompahgre Reservation
(now part of the Uintah and Ouray Reservation) was created in the
southern portion of Uintah County. Ashley Valley was not part of
either reservation, and by 1880 enough ranchers and farmers had
settled there that the territorial legislature created Uintah
County, taking most of the land from Wasatch County. The county
seat, originally in Ashley, was later moved to the larger community
of Vernal. With the building of irrigation canals other towns were
founded, including Jensen, Maeser, and Tridell.
In about 1888 Gilsonite was discovered in various parts of the
county and on the eastern portion of the Uncompahgre and Uintah
reservations. Miners quickly persuaded the federal government to
withdraw 7,000 acres from the Uintah Reservation so that they could
legally mine Gilsonite. This area, called "The Strip," for a time
lacked any law and order.
Uintah County's economy rests on farming, ranching, and the removal
of oil and gas. It is increasingly influenced by worldwide energy
prices.
Uintah High School located in Vernal and Union High School, which
serves residents of both Uintah and Duchesne County, is located
exactly on the county boundary on the eastern edge of Roosevelt. The
county's largest celebration is the Outlaw Festival, a month-long
festival held each summer in Vernal which celebrates the Old West
traditions and folklore that were part of the history of Uintah
County.
Author: Craig Fuller
Source: University of Utah, Media Collection
K-12 Educational Material/Non Commercial
DUCHESNE COUNTY DESCRIPTION:
County: 3-D Map
City:
3-D Map
Area: 255 square miles
Population (2000): 14,371
County Seat: Duchesne
Origin of County Name: after the Duchesne River which was
possibly named for a French-Canadian trapper
Principal Cities/Towns: Roosevelt (4,299), Duchesne (1,408),
Myton (539);
Economy: livestock, alfalfa and hay, oil, natural gas
Points of Interest: High Uintas Wilderness Area, Starvation
Reservoir, Big Sand Wash Reservoir
DUCHESNE COUNTY
BRIEF HISTORY
Author: John D. Barton
Source: University of Utah, Media Collection
K-12 Educational Material/Non Commercial
The community of Duchesne is located just above the junction of the
Strawberry and Duchesne rivers in the Uintah Basin of northeastern
Utah. It was first identified as a potential town site by Father
Escalante when the Dominguez-Escalante expedition camped near the
present-day town 18 September 1776 while on their epic journey.
Duchesne is strategically located not only due to its location at
the junction of the rivers but it is also at the mouth of Indian
Canyon, the major route into the Basin through the Tavaputs Plateau
from Price.
The town came into being in 1905 when the United States government
opened the region to homesteading under the Allotment Act. The land
that forms all of Duchesne County and western Uintah County had
formerly belonged to the Ute Indians as part of their reservation.
A.M. Murdock, an Indian trader at Whiterocks, obtained permission
from the government to set up a trading post at the site that became
Duchesne City. With the assistance of several other men, he set up a
large circus tent for a general store and trading post. Government
surveyors laid out the streets and the survey was accepted by the
government on 18 October 1905. Other settlers soon pitched their
tents and built pioneer dwellings that were replaced over the next
months and years with more modern buildings for homes and
businesses.
The town was originally called Dora, after Murdock's baby daughter.
This name was replaced for a short time by the name Theodore, in
honor of President Theodore Roosevelt. But when town to the east
adopted the name of Roosevelt, it was thought that two towns in the
same county named for the same president would be too confusing for
mail delivery. The name Duchesne was utilized for the new community.
The name Duchesne is taken from the name of the river that runs
through town and was likely named by fur trappers in the 1820s in
honor of Mother Treasa Duchesne founder of the School of the Sacred
Heart near St. Louis, Missouri.
On 1 January 1915 the eastern portion of Wasatch County was split
off to form Duchesne County; by a vote of county citizens, Duchesne
City became the county seat. Today Duchesne is a community of
approximately 1,200 people. It hosts four chapels (two LDS, a
Baptist, and a Catholic), two schools (an elementary and a high
school/junior high), several businesses and the county offices. For
several years, work on the Central Utah Project boosted the
community's population and business; a park and a bowling alley were
built to make the city more attractive for construction workers.
However, in the mid-1980s the dam projects were completed and
Duchesne's population declined by several hundred people. The
economic base of the community is presently centered in farming and
oil industry. As county seat, Duchesne's major celebration is the
annual county fair held in August. Due to the late date of
settlement of the community, even at the present date several of the
older citizens remember coming into the region as pioneers as
childern with their families.
Author: John D. Barton
Source: University of Utah, Media Collection
K-12 Educational Material/Non Commercial
ROOSEVELT CITY BRIEF HISTORY
City: 3-D Map
Author: John D. Barton
Source: University of Utah, Media Collection
K-12 Educational Material/Non Commercial
In 1905, by an act of Congress, the unallotted land of the Ute
Indian reservation was opened to homesteading. Several thousand
hopeful twentieth-century pioneers congregated in Provo and Grand
Junction with the hope of successfully drawing lots for a homestead
in a fertile region of the soon-to-be-opened lands. Throughout the
fall and winter of 1905-06 the settlers came to the Uinta Basin. The
town of Roosevelt was founded in early 1906 when Ed Harmston turned
his homestead claim into a townsite and laid out plots. His wife
named the prospective town in honor of the president of the United
States, Theodore Roosevelt. Within a short time a store, a post
office, and the Dry Gulch Irrigation Company were in business in the
new town. In 1907, the Harmstons donated two acres of ground for the
town's citizens to built a school. The first class had about fifteen
pupils, who had to provide books from their homes. Roosevelt soon
became the economic center for the area, eclipsing Myton and
Duchesne.
Roosevelt is situated on U.S. Highway 40 in the northeast corner of
the state, south of the Uinta Mountains, at an elevation of 5,250
feet. The town was incorporated at a mass meeting of forty-four
citizens on 21 February 1913. From 1906 to 1914 Roosevelt was in
Wasatch County, but in 1914 Duchesne County was formed from part of
Wasatch County, and, as the largest town in the county, Roosevelt
anticipated becoming the county seat. However, when the total
county-wide vote came in, the seat went to Duchesne. Roosevelt is
today home to approximately 3,500 people but serves as the business
center for several times that number from the many small towns and
farming areas that surround the town. Roosevelt has become the
region's educational center with Union High School, Uintah Basin
Area Technology Center, and Utah State University's Uintah Basin
Education Center all located there. Roosevelt is also home of the
only hospital in the county, Duchesne County Hospital. The economy
of Roosevelt is based on agriculture and the oil industry. Pennzoil
Refinery is the largest single employer in the city.
The UBIC (Uintah Basin Industrial Convention) is Roosevelt's annual
celebration. What started in the early part of the century as a
yearly display of the latest in farming and industrial technology
has developed into a yearly gala complete with parade, talent show,
concerts, and dances.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the dominant
religious denomination in Roosevelt, with two stakes centered in
town; but the community also boasts Roman Catholic, Christian
Assembly of God, Baptist, Jehovah's Witness, and other smaller
denomination congregations. Located near the Uintah/Ouray Indian
Reservation headquarters of Fort Duchesne, Roosevelt is a
multicultural and polyethnic community, with Caucasians and Native
Americans being the most numerous.
Author: John D. Barton
Source: University of Utah, Media Collection
K-12 Educational Material/Non Commercial
FORT DUCHESNE BRIEF HISTORY
Area: 3-D Map
Author: David L. Schirer
Source: University of Utah, Media Collection
K-12 Educational Material/Non Commercial
Fort Duchesne was established by Major Frederick William Benteen on
20 August 1886, on a site selected by General George Crook, and
General Crook soon took command of the new fort. Construction began
in October 1886 and the reservation was officially designated by
President Cleveland in September 1887. The fort continued to serve,
with an average detachment of 250 men, until its closure in
September 1912. Remnants of the fort still exist.
Fort Duchesne was established to replace Fort Thornburgh in the
Uinta Basin, which had been abandoned by the U.S. Army during the
winter of 1884-85. An outbreak of inter-band warfare among the Utes
during the winter of 1885-86 once more raised the question of
placing a fort in the basin. The Department of the Interior and the
War Department each sent investigators to the area who recommended
the establishment of a permanent fort. Crook selected the site in
August 1886; it was three miles above the junction of the Uintah and
Duchesne rivers and midway between the Whiterocks agency and Ouray
agency headquarters.
Major Benteen led two troops of the Ninth Cavalry from Fort
McKinney, Wyoming, and a Captain Duncan led four companies of
infantry from Fort Steele, Wyoming, onto the Ute Reservation to
establish the fort. The cavalry troops Benteen led into the Uinta
Basin were a detachment of the Ninth, which was a Black cavalry unit
that served on the Uintah frontier for twelve years. With the
outbreak of the Spanish-American War, the Ninth was sent to Cuba in
1898. The soldiers of the Ninth were highly decorated during that
war, and were among the men who followed Colonel Theodore Roosevelt
up San Juan Hill.
While Benteen's men reached the fort site without incident, Duncan's
infantry barely escaped disaster. As Duncan's men prepared to take a
shortcut, a Ute policeman rode up on a well lathered horse and
informed Duncan that nearly three hundred Utes lay in ambush for his
men. Duncan decided to march via the longer, regularly traveled
road, and arrived at the fort site without incident.
When the combined forces arrived at the fort site, they were
confronted by a force of 700 Utes. The soldiers quickly threw up a
picket line and began to dig defensive trenches. These proved to be
unnecessary when the Utes became convinced that the army would not
attack them as long as they remained passive. By October, the
soldiers had settled into the routine and business of the camp and
its construction.
President Grover Cleveland officially designated the six square
miles that comprised the fort reservation on 1 September 1887.
During the summer of 1887, the troops spent approximately $22,800 on
construction of the fort. This included the construction of
officers' and enlisted men's quarters, a commissary, a storehouse,
and a hospital, all of adobe brick. Establishment of Fort Duchesne
caused the War Department to again evaluate the need for the string
of small western forts. Fort Steele was abandoned in 1886 when the
troops left for Uintah County, and Fort Bridger was abandoned in
1890. Fort Duchesne was designated to guard the Indian frontier in
eastern Utah, western Colorado, and southwestern Wyoming.
Fort Duchesne declined in use from 1890 to 1910. In 1893 the four
infantry companies were removed to Fort Douglas. By 1909 there was
only one company of cavalry left. In 1910 the inspecting officer of
the U.S. Army "found no military reason why Fort Duchesne, Utah
should be continued as a military post." On 13 September 1912 Troop
M of the First Cavalry, the last remaining unit at the reservation,
left Fort Duchesne for Fort Boise, Idaho. The Indian Service
consolidated its Uintah and Ouray operations at Fort Duchesne after
the fort's abandonment by the army. The buildings that had been
constructed to control the Indians were at last used to assist them.
See: Thomas G. Alexander and Leonard S. Arrington, "The Utah
Military Frontier, 1872-1912: Forts Cameron, Thornburgh, and
Duchesne," Utah Historical Quarterly 32 (Fall 1964); June Lyman and
Norma Denver, compilers, Ute People: An Historical Study (1970);
Couben and Geneva Wright, "Indian White Relations in the Uintah
Basin," Utah Humanities Review 2 (October 1948).
Author: David L. Schirer
Source: University of Utah, Media Collection
K-12 Educational Material/Non Commercial
VERNAL CITY BRIEF HISTORY
City: 3-D Map
Author: Doris K. Burton
Source: University of Utah, Media Collection
K-12 Educational Material/Non Commercial
Vernal, Uintah County's largest city, is located in eastern Utah
near the Colorado State Line, and 175 miles east of Salt Lake City.
It is bordered on the north by the Uinta Mountains, one of the few
mountains ranges in the world which lie in an east-west rather than
the usual north to south direction. The Book Cliff Mountains lie to
the south, and Blue Mountain to the east, while Vernal itself lies
in Ashley Valley, named in honor of William H. Ashley, an early fur
trader who entered this area in 1825 by floating down the Green
River in a bull boat made of animal hides.
Vernal, unlike the majority of Utah towns, was not settled initially
by Mormon pioneers. Brigham Young sent a scouting party to Uinta
Basin in 1861 and received word back the area was good for nothing
but nomad purposes, hunting grounds for Indians and "to hold the
world together." That same year, President Abraham Lincoln set the
area aside as the Uintah Indian Reservation. Captain Pardon Dodds
was appointed Indian agent for this reservation.
When Dodds retired, he moved Ashley Valley to raise livestock, along
with agency workers, Morris Evans and John Blankenship. They arrived
on 14 February 1873 and settled on Ashley Creek. Dodds built the
first cabin in the valley, located about four miles northwest of
present day Vernal. Many single men--trappers, prospectors, home
seekers, and drifters--arrived in Ashley Valley, and some stayed.
However, there wasn't a woman in the area until 1876.
The area where Vernal is now located was called the Bench, and it
was described as a large barren cactus flat. The David Johnston
family moved onto the Bench on 6 June 1878. It was reported that
when they stopped their wagon, David took his shovel from the wagon
and cleared off the cactus so the children could stand without
getting cactus needles in their feet. He put the wagon on logs to
keep it off the ground as there were many lizards, horned toads,
scorpions, mice, and snakes in the area. Alva Hatch came to the
valley looking for a place to locate in May 1878. He returned later
with his family and his father, Jeremiah Hatch, along with
Jeremiah's two wives. The fall of 1879 brought many settlers to the
valley.
On 29 September 1879 the Meeker Massacre occurred in Colorado, with
the White River Utes killing their agent, Nathan Meeker, among
others. Renegade Utes then rode to Ashley Valley to convince the
Uintah Utes to join them in killing all the white people in the
area. Instead, the Uintah chiefs advised the settlers to "fort-up."
A fort was built on the Bench due to its open expanse. Many settlers
of Ashley Valley took their cabins apart, moving them to the fort
site. The incident was settled, but the people remained in the fort
that winter. The winter was severe, killing most of the animals. The
humans also suffered. Much of their grain had been gathered from the
ground, since grasshoppers had knocked it from the plant stocks; it
became moldy. Diphtheria took its toll. It was March before they
could get out of the valley for supplies.
Many families moved their cabins back to their homesteads, others
remained in the fort. A town grew out of the fort and became known
as Ashley Center. A store was opened and the residents applied for a
post office. The name Ashley Center was requested, but it was too
similar to the town of Ashley; therefore, the name Vernal was
assigned to the community by the U.S. Postal Department.
The enterprising settlers of the valley developed a basic irrigation
system that still serves the valley today. Because of the distance
to a major railhead, settlers produced, manufactured, and developed
about everything they needed. The leading livelihood was the cattle
and sheep; milling, the production of honey, and the farming of
grains and alfalfa were also important. Vernal still remains without
a railroad, but the highway transportation system has enabled the
city's residents to have access to most good and services..
Although the LDS Church helped set up Vernal as a town in 1884, the
town wasn't incorporated until 1897. Vernal thus had the distinction
of being a city without taxation for fifteen years. In 1948 Vernal
had its first oil boom. From that time on it has been a boom and
bust town. A thriving tourist business by Dinosaur National
Monument, as well as livestock and agriculture production, help keep
Vernal going during "bust" times.
Flaming Gorge Dam was built in 1964, bringing more tourists to the
area. Steinaker and Red Fleet dams, built in 1962 and 1980, provided
irrigation water and recreation. As with many cities, big stores
have moved to the outskirts of town, but small businesses are
keeping the downtown area alive. The population of Vernal City in
1990 was 6,644. Vernal, being the county seat, draws from a county
population of 22,211 and also from western Colorado.
Author: Doris K. Burton
Source: University of Utah, Media Collection
K-12 Educational Material/Non Commercial
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