Utah

Special emphasis was placed on public education during the Progressive Era (1890–1920s), since progressives believed that education was key to the moral redemption of an industrialized society. Running parallel to this Progressive Movement, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the Mormon Church), the most powerful institution in Utah, supported education’s transition from the semiformal and familial context to formal public establishments. The state introduced Utah’s Free Public School Act in 1890.

The Zion Cooperative Mercantile Institution (ZCMI), one of the first department stores in the United States, was established in 1868. Its flagship store in downtown Salt Lake City was completed in 1876, and consolidated different entities of ZCMI under one roof. The department store typology, first employed at Le Bon Marche in Paris in 1869, was part of the modernization of cities and their reorganization into nascent centers of bourgeois consumer culture. In the mid-nineteenth century, Salt Lake City was a strategic commercial hub of the American West.

The Cathedral of the Madeleine in Salt Lake City, the mother church of the Diocese of Salt Lake City, is one of the most imposing Catholic churches in Utah. It stands atop a steep hill on one of the city center’s most prominent streets, South Temple. The rusticated stone structure forms an integral part of the city’s Christian campus, with the First Presbyterian Church one block east, the Episcopal Diocese of Utah a couple blocks southwest, and the Mormon Temple Square about half a mile to the west.

The plan of Salt Lake City, laid out initially in 1847, is one of the few religiously inspired city plans in North America. It is explicitly based on the “City of Zion,” a plan that had been drawn in 1833 under the direction of Joseph Smith, the founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Smith’s murder in 1844 precipitated the movement of the Mormons to the American West, an expedition led by Smith’s successor prophet Brigham Young, which eventually resulted in the westward migration of tens of thousands between 1847 and 1890.

The Draper Senior Center, run by Salt Lake County’s Aging and Adult Services, serves as a social club for local senior residents. The dynamic structure, encased in undulating diagonals with expansive transparency and rich materials, uncouples senior facilities from assisted-living centers and, in its programming and formal organization, associates them with physical activity, entertainment, and communal events. The building was designed by Salt Lake City’s longstanding firm Edwards and Daniels Architects (EDA).

The Gustav L. Becker House, built at a time when Ogden was undergoing a second growth spurt, represents the ascendant domestic values of the American industrial class at the beginning of twentieth century. This boomtown first became a vital railway and exchange hub in 1869. As the town attracted industrial manufacturing and businesses, it became populated with a variety of architectural gems that indicated the rise of the town’s middle class.

The Cave Springs Cowboy Camp was a line camp located in what is now the Needles District of Canyonlands National Park. Since the 1880s, pioneering cattlemen settled in this region, and ranchers developed a network of trails and camps that were vital for moving herds across a challenging landscape in the winter months. The camp at Cave Springs particularly gained prominence in the early twentieth century, with the establishment of the Scorup-Sommerville Cattle Company in 1926, which grew to be the largest operation in Utah.

The Hurricane Canal is a 7.5-mile-long, hand-excavated channel for transporting water from the Virgin River, a tributary of the Colorado River. It was built by pioneer settlers between 1893 and 1904 in the small town of Hurricane in southwestern Utah. This arid area with limited cultivable land was prone to erratic floods and the canal was critical to the pioneers’ survival. The Hurricane Canal Company formed in 1893 under the leadership of James Jepson and John Steele and the shareholders began work on the canal immediately.

The Bingham Canyon Mine is one of the largest man-made excavations on earth, visible from outer space. In 2013, it reached a width of 2.5 miles and a depth of 3,900 feet. An active mine, its steady growth is a product of the mining industry that has been a major player in Utah’s economy since the 1860s. Before this period, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), which had a major say in the development of the area, discouraged mining of precious metals for fear it would take valuable manpower away from agriculture and attract non-Mormon settlers.

The William W. Ray House is located in the Yalecrest neighborhood southeast of downtown Salt Lake City. It was designed by Utah architect Taylor A. Woolley, a former draftsman to Frank Lloyd Wright, who introduced the Prairie Style to his home state when he returned in 1911. Woolley was hired by attorney William W. Ray to design a residence on a long, narrow lot that sloped downward toward Red Butte Creek at the south end. Ray had purchased the lot in the new subdivision in 1913, and construction on the house began two years later, after the neighborhood infrastructure was complete.