A History of Salt Lake County

Souplines And Survival, 1930-1950

T h e alignment Salt Lake County found with national concerns and trends during the first decades of the twentieth century only strengthened with the cataclysmic events of the 1930s and 1940s. The Great Depression and World War I1 each solidified the county's iden-tity as a center for both public programs and private enterprise; each also mobilized county residents on a large scale to survive-and help others survive-hard economic times and to promote the war effort. On a deeper level, each challenge rallied Salt Lakers not only as a county but as Americans with Washington, D.C., acting as both nur-turing parent and commander-at-arms. The differences in employ-ment and lifestyle long proscribed by gender and by racial and ethnic background also shifted with the national fortunes, and the oppor-tunities and expectations of each group altered as well. The Depression struck few states harder than Utah, which stag-gered under the blow. Quickly, hardhit Salt Lake County became the focus for aid throughout the state and region as various government programs developed or moved in. In the process, the valley's peoples leaned on the generous, if fallible, arm of the federal government SOUPLINEANSD SURVIVA1L9,3 0-1 950 169 more heavily than Salt Lakers in the late nineteenth century ever could have predicted. As before, Salt Lake County responded with patriotism and com-mercial vigor to the nation's second great war. Just as fast, deploy-ment and the emergence of war industries turned Depression conditions topsy turvy. Jobs abounded and housing became scarce; people again had cash in their pockets, but everyday goods were rationed. Now the reliance on federal programs developed during the Depression became a dependence on military-related contracts, for defense industry became a staple long after the war's end. In fact, the valley's link with the military-industrial complex tightened until Salt Lake County truly could not afford a secure and lasting peace. During both decades then, the Salt Lake Valley remained a sig-nificant crossroads and a center of activity, society, and culture; as such, it magnetized most racial, ethnic, and religious communities within the state. Also, by 1930, the LDS proportion of 194,102 county residents increased to 48 percent, and the valley's importance as a religious center radiated through what was commonly called Mormon country. It included 800,000 people spread over 185,000 square miles throughout Utah and in southern Idaho, eastern Nevada, and southwestern Wyoming. The contrasts between metropolitan and rural living persisted. Salt Lake City boasted seventy-five hotels amid its office buildings, department stores, recreational facilities, and halls of worship. Terminals spewed trains, trucks, and buses carrying freight and pas-sengers in every direction. Outside the capital city's limits, the pop-ulation considered itself more rural than suburban although city governments served the citizens of Murray, Sandy, Draper, Riverton, and Bingham. Unincorporated areas such as Millcreek, Cottonwood, Granger, Bennion, and Taylorsville depended upon county services which expanded and diversified after World War I1 to suit the needs of the scattered population. The shifts in workforce and lifestyle during these dramatic decades brought lasting effects to various groups. Valley dwellers of German and especially Japanese descent suffered the stigma of asso-ciation with America's enemies. During the Depression, white males, recognized as "heads of families," were favored in the job market over women and non-Anglo men. Then with war, women went to work in increasing numbers, and people of color found opportunities in both civil and military life-opportunities that had been unavailable before. Great challenges brought great changes, and the valley's citizens rallied to both. In doing so, they forged new links between the valley and the world beyond; more subtle, perhaps, were the new dynamics emerging at home between peoples and genders. The signs that hard times approached had increased during the last half of the Roaring Twenties even as prohibition, motion pic-tures, and social reform kept things lively. As early as 1925, an esti-mated three thousand people sought work unsuccessfully in Salt Lake City, most of them married men with families. The city set up a Free City Employment Bureau, but job opportunities continued to decline. People left the county seeking work, and the population dropped by five thousand in the 1930 census. One example of the impact on individuals appeared in a list of delinquent taxpayers pub-lished in the Deseret News in 1927-the list filled forty-three pages.' Twenty-five banks failed in Utah between 1929 and 1933, includ-ing Salt Lake County's Sugar Banking Company in Sugarhouse, the Jordan Valley Bank in Riverton, the Midvale State Bank, and the '> Deseret Savings Bank in Salt Lake City.2 "No matter the size . . ., one local history commented wryly, "many still remember how much was in their account when the bank failed.''3 The Salt Lake City Chamber of Commerce began coordinating relief efforts by government and various churches. The Chamber was ably led by Gus P. Backman who resigned as a ZCMI executive in 1930. A year later, Sylvester Q. Cannon, presiding bishop of the LDS church, was named vice-chair of the city's advisory committee on unemployment. In 193 1 the chamber sponsored a massive benefit performance the evening before Thanksgiving in six Salt Lake City theaters. The proceeds went to the needy.4 Between 1931 and 1932, the Salt Lake City and Salt Lake County commissions met jointly to discuss aiding citizens, promising to pro-vide some $340,000 in wages for public works. A major storm sewer project was proposed, to be financed by a $600,000 bond election SOUPLINEANSD SURVIVA1L9,3 0-1950 171 Since settlement, women joined Salt Lake County's workforce-their num-bers increasing dramatically during World War 11. Here seamstresses mea-sure and cut cloth at the Utah Woolen Mills. (Utah State Historical Society) that carried by a large majority. Meanwhile, the LDS church began handing out foodstuffs from a warehouse on West Temple Street. In the winter of 1932-33, Murray City distributed sixty-seven carloads of coal to 1,300 fa'milies. Despite aid and civic leaders' optimistic statements, the situation worsened. By 1932 only three other states could lament higher unem-ployment than Utah where nearly 36 percent of the work force sought jobs. Many who were still employed felt the pinch when the wage level decreased by one-third and the work week shrank by a day as major employers, including the railroads and the Utah Copper Company, struggled to hold the line. That proved impossible. The Arthur plant closed in 1930 while the Magna mill and mine operated at a reduced output, staggering work shifts in order to retain as many employees as possible. Production continued to decline as the demand for copper sank. By 1933 operations were only one-fifth of normal capacity. Gradually the Kennecott Copper Corporation, a holding company for the Guggenheim-affiliated copper properties worldwide, increased its holdings in the Utah Copper Company. In 1936 it assumed owner-ship of all the Utah Copper Company's property and asset^.^ As copper mining lagged, the railroads and certain industries diminished also. Despite the closure of several smelters due to smoke pollution, the smelting industry still dominated the Murray econ-omy. When the major American Smelting and Refining Company closed temporarily in 193 1, the impact was tremendous. Virtually every business and service in the valley shrank as these giants lan-guished. By July 1933, the county recognized 24,239 unemployed people, 11,500 of whom were on relief. Many unemployed workers sought help at the newly organized Unemployed Council of Salt Lake, the Workers' League, and Working Women's Leag~e.~ Women's efforts to find paid work increased as family incomes plummeted. White women who had been born in the valley moved increasingly into "pink collar" clerical, teaching, or health sectors. Foreign-born women most often worked in manufacturing. African- American women worked outside the home at a higher proportion than other women, most often in domestic service. Not only were women commonly paid less than men, but their need to earn income was less recognized than that of a husband and father. Meanwhile women's organizations in Salt Lake City took an increasingly aggressive role in providing aid to the needy and in inter-acting with local government. The LDS Relief Society and other churches' auxiliaries aided families, while the Women's Safety Council, the Salt Lake Council of Women, and representatives of the Federation of Women's Clubs frequently lobbied commission meet-ings around such issues as installing semaphores at dangerous cross streets. The Neighborhood House, founded in 1894 and relocated in 1928 to 727 West First South Street, played an important part. It enjoyed support from both the board of education and the legisla-ture, raising money for charitable causes and providing day care, a kindergarten, a library, and a program for shut-ins. In 1935 a dental clinic opened, offering free or inexpensive dental care according to income. SOUPLINEASN D SURVIVAL19, 30-1 950 173 For those who kept their jobs amid declining prices, the Depression existed as a general pall of hardship and hopelessness. Many of the employed lent a hand to those less fortunate. Salt Lake City mayor Louis Marcus donated 10 percent of his salary to the Community Chest. When state employees in the Capitol decided to donate 4 percent of their salaries to the needy, the Salt Lake Chamber of Commerce challenged city, county, and school employees to do the same. The private sector followed suit with workers at the Utah Gas and Coke Company, Pike Manufacturing Company, Utah Oil Refining Company, and the Continental Oil Company all voting for a 2 percent cut in their pay. In addition, many teachers volunteered their time to help the jobless increase their vocational skill^.^ In addition, make-work projects flourished, ranging from small tasks to giant enterprises aimed at public improvement, including work on the University of Utah campus, the state fair grounds, the Capitol grounds, the Bonneville golf course, and the Hogle Gardens zoo. Still, the economic situation deteriorated; neither local govern-ments, churches, nor citizens could reverse the inertia that encom-passed the nation and much of the world. In 1929 the per capita income had been $537 in Utah, only 80 percent of the national aver-age. In 1933 it plummeted to $275 annually. By 1935 more than one in five Salt Lakers were on relief, and one in three of the rest lived , below the poverty level.' When mortgages collapsed or the rent came due, families were turned out of their homes, and their belongings went to auction to satisfy their debtors. Attitudes changed as the Depression spread like a relentless virus; shame gave way to outrage. Sheriff's auctions increasingly drew crowds who came not to buy but to obstruct. In February 1933, for instance, a crowd held up a sheriff's sale so long that tear gas and fire hoses were used to disperse the protesters. Around 1,500 people rallied at the City and County Building then marched up the hill to the State Capitol. There they demanded that the legislature pass laws to establish unemployment insurance and free employment bureaus, and to give full time pay for thirty hours Living patterns changed as people coped with the downward As the Great Depression tightened its grip, private shame and despair gal-vanized into public protest. Several times crowds demanding government aid were forcibly dispersed, as happened at this 1933 demonstration at the City and County Building. shift in fortune. Children scampered along railroad tracks gathering coal that fell from the trains, sometimes liberating a few chunks still on the cars. Students and unemployed workers found seasonal work picking fruit and vegetables in orchards and fields. During these years, agriculture regained a part of the Murray economy lost to min-ing and smelting. Whole families moved with the crops as the depres-sion deepened, and transience and homelessness became a way of life. Everywhere-in downtown Salt Lake City, in small cities, and along farms-peddling blossomed. Mothers bought vegetables wholesale or picked them from the garden, then sent their children door to door to sell them retail. Everything from Bibles to mouse-traps to neckties could be purchased on doorstep or street corner. Families doubled up on farms as jobs in mines and smelters van-ished; for some, beans and biscuits became a staple diet. An abandoned train-stop housing project called Chesterfield was resettled as part of Salt Lake County's attempt to aid the poor. Welfare Department officials decided that rather than provide rent for existing homes, they should purchase small lots for $10 each, then assist impoverished families in building homes. The resulting hous-ing was admittedly meager, but 110 families moved into Chesterfield during the Depression, most between 1936 and 1939. Nearly one-third of the families headed by males drew their primary income from welfare. 'O Twenty-three of these families lived in dugouts, tents, old chicken coops, or huts made from packing boxes. Another thirty-six families lived in two-room homes, most of which had been expanded from a single room. Most had electricity, but few had central heating or bathtubs with running water. The well water was unfit to drink, and the families shared open privies since the high water table made the use of septic tanks of cesspools impractical. Medical care was scarce, school absenteeism and juvenile absenteeism common; yet Chesterfield residents proved themselves a plucky lot. One school-teacher noted: Not only are the residents desirous of remaining in the com-munity, but they intend to fight for the right to live there . . . An attitude of defiance, mingled with some resentment, is apparent in their demands for services and in their tendency toward commu-nity isolation. A remark of one father is typical: "Not any of us would be living in this place if we weren't forced out here; but now that we are here, we'll show them."" Most Chesterfield residents were Mormon, and the LDS church held Sunday school in a tin shed. In addition, the church helped to develop a poultry farm at 2100 South and Eighth West streets. The church's various ad hoc efforts mounted into a comprehensive relief program, highlighted in a central Salt Lake City stake under the guid-ance of Harold B. Lee, a future church president. In 1936 the church officially announced its Church Security Plan later known as the Welfare Plan. Transients hitched rides on trains and roamed the valley, knock-ing at back doors to offer work in exchange for a meal. Along the Jordan River, caves that had once sheltered dispossessed Indians now provided temporary homes for a new group of wanderers. "During the Depression, we used to go down to the tracks by the river and talk to the hoboes," Charles L. Lyon recalled. "Even the girls would go down and talk to them. You never worried about it." While the travelers mixed up a stew over an open fire, the young people played games in the fields. For impromptu baseball diamonds, the resident recalled, "we made the bases out of cows' pancakes. When we hollered 'slide,' you really could, when you hit one of those bases."12 During this decade, certain residential and social patterns devel-oped. In Salt Lake City, the Avenues and central neighborhoods south of the business district comprised a mixed community of families with moderate incomes. More affluent families lived toward the east benches, and country estates continued to offer gracious living to wealthy families in Cottonwood and Holladay. Meanwhile, families working in the mills, smelters, and other heavy industry tended to gather toward the west and southwest. Although the public schools were never segregated, they drew from neighborhoods that effectively were. Socioeconomics provided certain strata while both custom and law did the rest. The Salt Lake Chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People wrestled with segregation in public facilities, particularly at the municipal bath house and on buses and trolleys. African- Americans were routinely banned from hotels, beauty salons, and most restaurants. The nature of the battle had changed little since 1910 when one intrepid soul sued Saltair after being ejected from the resort solely due to race. He was awarded damages-the 25 cents he had paid for admission." In 1939 realtor Sheldon Brewster brought the Salt Lake City Commission a petition with one thousand signatures asking that black residents be restricted to living in one area of the city. This ghetto should be located away from the City and County Building, he suggested, so that visitors to the city would not come in contact with African-Americans.14 Many of Salt Lake City's black citizens lived in the central city SOUPLINEASN D SURVIVA1L9,3 0-1950 177 area where Brewster was an LDS bishop and later served in a stake presidency. A motel owner and realtor, Brewster later became speaker of the State House of Representatives, where he resisted early civil rights legislation to integrate public accommodations.15 When the ghetto petition became known, the African-American community rose in protest, marching through town to the Capitol. The petition was denied by the Salt Lake City Commission; however, a restrictive covenant policy was inserted into real estate contracts to prohibit African-Americans from purchasing homes and other prop-erty. Although this was ruled unconstitutional a decade later, similar provisions persisted in many deeds and contracts.16 Ethnic communities no longer centered entirely around churches, boarding houses, or coffee houses. Italian fraternal organi-zations, for instance, included La Societa' Cristoforo Colurnbo, the Figlia D'Italia, and the Italian Mothers Club. Interestingly, mainly non-Mormon clubs and groups such as the Knights of Columbus, the Elks, Moose, and Eagles helped to bridge the gap between major-ity and minority communities. Not surprisingly, when hard times pressured the masses, the cit-izens already disadvantaged hurt most, including the valley's most recent immigrants. Mexicans and Mexican-Americans lost railroad and mining jobs and found Anglos eager and favored when it came time to pick crops. Half of the newcomers left the state, some through deportation. Those who stayed struggled to survive, and a few longlived Mexican restaurants made their start. In 1930, however, more than 2,300 Utah residents had listed Mexico as their birthplace; by the 1940 census, that number would be less than half.'? The Hispanic community was served then and in the decades to come primarily by the Catholic church. In 1930 the Salt Lake City mission gained separate status as the Mission of Our Lady of Guadalupe which became the heart of the westside community. Father James Earl Collins led the mission for nearly three decades, sharing his salary with his parishioners. Collins patched his suits and glued composition soles to his shoes, suffering in outraged silence the charity of richer members whose good intentions were tainted, in his mind, by their condescension "toward the poor Spanish-speaking women with their ever-present babies and small childrenl'lR In the larger Catholic community, Bishop James E. Kearney led a drive to pay off the long-term debt on the Cathedral of the Madeline on South Temple Street so that the lofty edifice could be consecrated. One evening the Tabernacle opened its doors to six thousand people for a fundraiser featuring Father Bernard Hubbard, a renowned explorer and geologist. Despite the times, the fundrais-ing effort finally saw success. In October 1936, a delegation of dignitaries visited Salt Lake City, including Archbishop Francis J. Spellman (later Cardinal) and Eugenio Cardinal Pacelli (later Pope Pius XII). Soon Kearney announced the consecration ceremony for which twelve crosses were mounted on the inner walls fitted with twelve tapers, anointed, and sanctified. Shortly thereafter, Kearney was rewarded with an appoint-ment in the East and replaced by Bishop Duane G. Hunt, a convert from Methodism who had taught public speaking and debate at the University of Utah before entering the seminary. Hunt received the first ordination to be given in the Cathedral of the Madeleine and was consecrated a bishop in 1937.19 As the Depression tightened its cold grip, Salt Lake County changed its electoral mind along with the rest of the state, which had supported Republican presidents Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover. In 1932 Utahns embraced Democratic candidate Franklin D. Roosevelt, giving him 56 percent of the vote. In fact, the Democratic sweep that year showed its strength when it elected Elbert Thomas, a little-known University of Utah professor over the long untouchable senator, Reed Smoot. As the votes mounted, Smoot "suspected that someone was playing a ghastly joke on him."20 Non-Mormon Louis Marcus became mayor of Salt Lake City over opposition led by an LDS stake president, Hugh B. Brown (who would later serve in the First Presidency). Soon after assuming office, Marcus traveled to Washington, D.C., and met with Public Works Administration director Harold Ickes, then returned with the wel-come announcement that Ickes had committed $2.5 million for relief in Salt Lake City. The acquisition and application of federal dollars by city and county governments proved problematic as "alphabet programs" proliferated under the more vigorous leadership of Harry Hopkins; nevertheless, those dollars and the work that earned them SOUPLINEANSD SURVIVA1L9,3 0-1 950 179 built a crucial lifeline to Salt Lake County. In 1938, for instance, when the Surplus Commodities Commission gave Salt Lake City the eighth food stamp distribution center in the nation, 20,000 residents had incomes low enough to qualify them for the program.21 Between 1935 and 1942, the federal Works Progress Admin-istration employed an average of 11,000 Utahns. In the capital city alone, the WPA employed three thousand full-time workers and as many part-time. County-wide, these programs covered a wide variety of projects. Workers began designing and constructing parks, play-grounds, highways, swimming pools, storm sewers, and airport run-ways. They erected numerous public buildings for cities, the university, and for school districts, even painting murals in high schools. Water, always a crucial issue for valley residents, became a prior-ity as the programs developed. Federal partnership made possible a system of aqueducts that provided Salt Lake City with a long-term, well-designed water supply. Deer Creek dam on the Provo River in Wasatch County was begun in 1938 and finished in 1941 with the Salt Lake Aqueduct reaching completion a few years later. In addi-tion, Murray's new million-gallon reservoir built throughout 1936 by the WPA was modern enough to become a model for other western states. In Sandy the WPA hired large crews of local men to line First and Second East streets with irrigation ditches. Originating in the East Jordan Canal and Little Cottonwood Creek, water stretched through a network of canals, lining streets and nourishing gardens. Sanitation projects became a priority also. Bingham, long dis-graced by the polluted creek that bisected the town, received a first-rate sewer line. Murray was the beneficiary of another new sewer system completed in 1940. Over 45,000 feet of sewer lines replaced individual cesspools and outhouses. As federal dollars poured into the valley and the benefits became evident, the valley's residents experienced a mental turnaround prob-ably as profound as the one experienced by many of their progeni-tors. In the late nineteenth century, the marital status revered by the majority of residents had reversed from polygamy to monogamy despite social norms and religious belief. Now residents' engrained independence and inherited resentment of anything federal were kicked aside. In both situations, survival was at stake, and, in both instances, the change of mind did not necessarily saturate the deeper layers of emotion. If the acceptance of federal aid was grudging-and Salt Lakers would both decry and depend on it for decades to come-it was nev-ertheless widespread. Only eight states received more aid per capita from the federal government than did Utah. As a result the private preserves of government, business, and family opened to new part-nerships. By the decade's end, for every tax dollar Utahns sent to Washington, seven returned to their outstretched hands. Other attitudes changed, too. If mothers could find jobs, they worked outside the home; otherwise, many entered training pro-grams. In either case, numerous children needed care. Both Salt Lake City and the University of Utah opened child care programs to meet the demand. In Bingham, the Women's Work Center paid women $1.25 per day to sew and quilt. Some programs offered both help with children and with education or job training; for instance, one school lunch program offered mothers an education in nutrition. One vigorous woman who turned heads in the valley and, to a lesser degree, in the nation was Democratic lawyer Reva Beck Bosone. Elected in 1932 to the legislature, she pushed through a bill to pro-tect women and children in industry. She helped convince the gover-nor to sign the Minimum Wage and Hour Law for Women and Children and create the Women's Division of the Utah State Industrial Commission. At the time, such a bill led the way among women's concerns nationally. After two legislative terms, Bosone ran for city commission and lost, then in 1936 she was elected city judge. She unleashed her reform strategies in the traffic court, raising fines from $5 to $10, then to $25, and sometimes jailing repeat offenders. The National Public Safety Magazine reported that Bosone possessed "a severity that has stricken roadhogs and signal light crashers with terror. . . ."22 Bosone was also known for her humanity in dealing with offend-ers, and she allied with Alcoholics Anonymous. She balanced the penalties imposed by the court with a traffic school, allowing reduced fines for those who could pass the exam. Her efforts showed when the valley's traffic toll fell from near the top of the national record SOUPLINEANSD SURVIVA1L9,3 0-1 950 181 almost to the bottom, and car insurance rates followed. In 1948 Bosone was elected to the United States House of Representatives where she served two terms. Not surprisingly during a literally depressing time, entertainment acquired a special sheen. Hours spent viewing The Wizard of Oz or Gone With the Wind, wondering at exotic birds, or offering bits of bread to deer allowed escape from the grim side of reality. For a quar-ter or 35 cents, movies offered increasingly glamorous stars and sto-rylines. Some events were free. In 1936 25,000 people attended the Twenty-Fourth of July pageant and another 100,000 watched the parade. Three years later, 12,000 enjoyed the rodeo at the fairgrounds. The number of parks and playgrounds increased during the Depression years, totaling sixteen parks and three golf courses by 1940. A zoo had grown in Liberty Park, beginning in 19 1 1 with a few ducks and a deer. Now Mr. and Mrs. James A. Hogle donated prop-erty at the mouth of Emigration Canyon to the Salt Lake Zoological Society, the city donated the animals in the park's zoo, and private donations, including $2,000 from the LDS church, aided construc-tion. Liberty Park's elephantine matriarch, Princess Alice, refused to relocate, and not even a do-or-die mandate could persuade her. Only a citizens' protest prevented the stubborn mammoth's destruction. Finally Princess Alice was transported to her new home near the mountains. No sooner was the zoo relocated than banker Russell Lord Tracy, in 1938, presented the children of Salt Lake City with his exotic bird collection, and Tracy Aviary opened where the zoo had been. A quar-tet of seals and, later, monkeys and deer joined hundreds of species of birds. By the end of its first year, the aviary drew an estimated 60,000 visitors. Tracy advanced the money to build a winter shelter; between 1939 and 1945, the facility added a lake with an island, walk-ways, additional trees, and a rock shelter for barbary sheep.23 The Tracy Aviary was not the first in the valley. Dr. George Allen founded his own, in 193 1, on Allen Park Drive near Westminster College. Allen supported both Tracy Aviary and the Hogle Zoo, but also offered an eight-acre retreat to the public. Its cabins hosted such noted guests as Herbert Hoover and Paul Robeson. More than seven hundred birds from every continent except Antarctica were bred and studied amid the rustic setting and the gurgle of Emigration Creek.24 Black Rock and Sunset Beach resorts opened on the shores of Great Salt Lake, even as Saltair struggled for its share of the enter-tainment market. Unfortunately, the lake receded, leaving smelly mud in its wake; local residents tended to leave bobbing in salty waves primarily to curious tourists. Valley residents were more attracted by the big bands and ball-rooom dancing popular during the Depression, and some of the best played along the shores of the Great Salt Lake. Harry Erickson and later Jerry Beesley led the Greater Saltair Orchestra, sometimes joined by the KSL orchestra. Imported entertainment included singer Tony Martin, bands such as Harry Owens and the Royal Hawaiians, and dance orchestras led by Jimmy Walsh, Carol Lofner, Xavier Cugat, Eddy Duchin, and Bar Woodyard. A decade later, war-weary crowds would dance to the rhythms of bandleaders such as Glen Miller, Ozzie Nelson, Bob Crosby, Gene Krupa, Les Brown, and Sammy Kay. In fact, dance halls sprang up around the valley including the Old Mill, the Hotel Utah Starlight Gardens, the Bluebird, the Coconut Grove, the Silver Slipper, and Pinecrest up Emigration Canyon. Ironically, while many African-American artists entertained huge audiences made up of white faces, local black residents "faced the ignominy of having to sit in the balcony sections of theatres and stand outside the ballrooms. . . ."26 Fine arts in the valley were blessed both by government support and by the people's need to be edified. Under the Roosevelt's New Deal, artists, photographers, and writers could earn around $80 per month for painting murals-most significantly in the Capitol dome-teaching classes, writing local histories, and organizing archives. Most notable was the development of the Utah Symphony, the spiritual descendant of the Salt Lake Symphony and the Salt Lake Philharmonic. Reginald Beales was selected by the WPA to employ indigent musicians registered on public relief rolls. As a result, the Utah State Sifonietta began in 1935 with a core of five musicians. In SOUPLINEASN D SURVIVA1L9,3 0-1950 183 less than five years, the growing orchestra had performed more than one thousand concerts for over 348,000 listeners as it traveled statewide. In 1940 the first meeting of the Utah State Symphony Orchestra Association elected Fred E. Smith as president and planned a concert less than one month in the future. Hans Heniot, whose guest baton guided this success, accepted an invitation to serve as the orchestra's Accidents and disasters were no respecters of hard times, and those occurring in the 1930s struck people at their most vulnerable. Bingham, for instance, was not only slammed by layoffs and shut-downs, but in 1932 it was devastated by a fire in Highland Boy. The blaze destroyed the surface buildings of the Utah Delaware Mine, the St. Bernard Hotel, the Miners Pool Hall, the Princess Theater, the Serbian and Croatian lodges, and seventy-five homes. Three hundred people were left homeless.28 Since many families were already on relief and county funds insufficient to meet yet another crisis, Bingham appealed to the American Red Cross and other agencies. The Red Cross, the American Legion Auxiliary, the Bingham Relief Committee, and the LDS Relief Society came to the rescue with truckloads of furniture and clothing, even as the Utah-Delaware Mining Company offered vacant houses to the homeless. The South Slav community, never-theless, had been decimated as thoroughly by fire and unemployment as the Mexican community was by unemployment and deportation. Many left the canyon to search for jobs elsewhere.29 Then, on 2 December 1938, the nation's worst school bus acci-dent to date occurred at 10200 South and Fourth West in Sandy. The deaths of the bus driver and twenty-three students from South Jordan, Riverton, Crescent, and Bluffdale devastated the southwest area.)' The New York Times deplored the tragedy, and Life magazine sent a reporter and photographer to capture the valley's trauma. The Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad's Flying Ute almost literally flew toward Salt Lake City early that morning, nearly two hours late in bringing its crew home. Fog and snow whirled outside the freight train's half-mile of cars as it passed the Point of the Mountain and rushed through Riverton at speeds estimated between fifty and seventy miles per hour. Simultaneously a Jordan District school bus wound its way through parts of Riverton, South Jordan, Crescent, and Bluffdale, gathering thirty-eight Jordan High School students by the time it headed north along Fourth West parallel to the railroad tracks. At 10200 South, the road turned directly east across the tracks before continuing north again. The bus pulled up to the crossing and stopped, then-as several witnesses watched unbelieving-it pulled onto the tracks.31 With a half-mile of visibility, the fireman of the Flying Ute saw the bus stop at the crossing. He yelled as the bus started across; only the length of the engine and two freight cars lay between it and tragedy. The screeching of train brakes was almost instantly joined by the splintering crash of metal and glass, as the engine carried the crumpled bus frame nearly two blocks before it ground to a stop. Worst of all were the screams of injured students flung along the tracks. Gradually some of the screams faded and stopped. Deseret News staffer Wilby Durham reported: "On our way to the accident we passed the first two ambulance loads of injured, dead, and dying. It was snowing, the road was icy, and one ambulance nar-rowly missed hitting us. . . ."32 The ambulances rushed at seventy miles an hour toward the expanded Salt Lake County General Hospital, an eternity away on Twenty-First South and State Street. On the scene, Durham continued: ''All around us were hysterical parents, sheriffs, officers, police, doctors, and milling spectators. Bodies were strewn for two blocks along the railroad tracks."33 sur-rounded by school books, band instruments, purses, briefcases, and shoes-some with feet still in them. "I watched deputy sheriffs as they loaded fourteen bodies into a truck, a make-shift ambulance," Durham continued. "Grief-stricken parents looked into each bundle as it was placed on the truck. . . . Identification for the most part was an impossible task."34W ith a tem-porary morgue set up a hospital ward, county and city school nurses worked with parents to identify the bodies. When word of the accident reached Jordan High School, classes dismissed and did not reconvene until after the victims were memo- SOUPLINEASN D SURVIVA19L3,0 -1 950 185 rialized and buried. Mass hneral services were held for most of the victims in the Riverton Junior High School auditorium attended by dignitaries such as Governor Henry H. Blood, LDS apostle Joseph Fielding Smith, and state school superintendent Samuel 0. Bennion. In addition, nine hundred students attended a memorial service in the Jordan High School auditorium and several weeks later, LDS church leader David 0. McKay conducted a special service in the West Jordan Stake Center. The valley responded to the tragedy with a fundraising campaign to help defray funeral expenses and rehabilitation costs. Administered by the Red Cross, the committee included representatives of churches, businesses, veterans groups, school officials, and the media. Both Salt Lake County and the LDS church made sizable contribu-tions. In Draper, Sandy, Midvale, and Riverton, movie theaters offered benefit shows to aid the effort. Governor Blood and various agencies investigated the crash. The Interstate Commerce Commission faulted the bus driver who had failed to see the train approaching from the side of the bus opposite his seat. The commis-sion recommended that school bus drivers be required to open the front door when stopping at railroad crossings. Lawsuits brought by the parents of some of the victims led to an $80,000 out-of-court set-tlement by the railr~ad.~' During that decade, two airline crashes also drew attention to the hazards of modern transportation. As had the railroad, aviators took a direct route across the Great Salt Lake. First a plane owned by the Standard Oil Company of California crashed into the lake on 6 October 1935. Three men died, and the plane was not located for four months. Two years later, an army plane wrecked on the heavy waves. One flier made the long swim to the highway west of Black Rock, frightening motorists with the specter off "a naked maniac" waving his arms at them, but his companion, after electing to stay with the ship in stormy seas, swam for it too late. Search parties found the body two days later.36 During the next decade, a B-25 bomber and a P-47 ship also sank into the lake's depths, claiming the lives of six men in addition to a student pilot, who dipped a wing too low while "stunting just off Black R~ck."~' Despite the Great Salt Lake's appetite for modern vehicles, the aviation industry grew near its shores even during the Depression. In 1930 Woodward Field was renamed the Salt Lake City Municipal Airport. Its four hundred acres included eleven aircraft hangars and two gravel runways. Although virtually all private building stopped during the Depression, Salt Lake City managed to make the airport an exception, gaining presidential approval to expand. The WPA pro-vided funds for labor, and the city invested $52,000 in an airport administration building that housed a passenger waiting room, a mail room, a manager's office, lunch room, weather observatory, and a radio control room. Airlines could lease office space there, and new runways and a drainage system increased the system's efficiency. By 1938 the Salt Lake Airport was considered one of the nation's finest.38 Actually this reputation came just in time. By 1943 the airport became a training base and replacement depot for the United States Air Force during World War 11. In addition, the Salt Lake Municipal Airport I1 was built in West Jordan to accommodate the number of trainees. War was coming, and the steady decline of the Depression was about to be replaced by the zooming roller coaster ride of World War 11. Newsreels and newspapers informed valley residents of the spreading war in Europe, even as they continued to struggle finan-cially through the waning years of the depression. One nation after another fell to the German forces while England and Russia impor-tuned the United States for help. Ironically, only the war America was reluctant to enter would end its depression. Although fought in for-eign lands and seas, World War I1 brought many changes to the United States, changes that were immediately and lastingly visible in the Salt Lake Valley. Following a Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor Naval Base in Hawaii on 7 December 1941, more than 30,000 valley residents entered the military-more than 16,000 were inducted and over 13,000 enlisted. Both crime and university enrollment declined as the young went to war; the marriage rate rose, soon followed by the birth rate. Additionally the war came to the valley with the local deploy- SOUPLINEANSD SURVIVA1L9,3 0-1950 187 Salt Lake City's Japanese-American baseball team posed for a team picture in front of the Salt Lake Buddhist Church. (Utah State Historical Society) ment of troops, the rise of defense industry, the location of agencies, and the development of housing and services necessary to sustain the war effort. Within Salt Lake City, the Chamber of Commerce named twenty-six standing committees in the service of civil defense. In November 1941 the Salt Lake City and Salt Lake County Civil Defense councils met together in an effort to stimulate public inter-est. Gus Backman, representing Governor Herbert B. Maw, suggested that the committee use existing organizations-the LDS "block teachers" program, for instance-in arranging for civil defense. Training programs opened and hospitality centers for the troops were designated. In January 1942, the city council nearly came to blows over the question of administering loyalty oaths to city employees. That October Salt Lake City became one of few cities to receive direct assistance from the National Resources Planning Board in coordi-nating post-war planning.39 The war dominated virtually every aspect of everyday life from the stars hung in living room windows announcing a soldier in the 'ow 1 IProe! <Inmi.ii,, Or Or* R d F APE. 111:RRI: 5 l'l,ORES. RANr'ISCO Trrrninado PI PI Rnilc C;r:~tia, v iiirtv t g t t t r.1 ti~r-rnrt iyrft-n y> clc nuratr;i Ficxtn. I J c i I nr. c.r:r.n t ( t(.f,? M t C n t i i f ~ This poster announces an elaborate celebration to held at Bingham Canyon on 16 September 1942 in honor of Mexico's Independence Day. (Utah State Historical Society) family to rationing and conservation. Toothpicks replaced hairpins; gasoline, sugar, shoes, coffee, and other goods were rationed and sometimes disappeared altogether. Due to rationing and shortages, Saltair closed from 1943 through 1945. SOUPLINEANSD SURVIVA1L9, 30-1 950 189 In order to save gasoline, Salt Lake City eliminated unnecessary trolley stops and traffic signals. More people than usual climbed aboard trolleys and buses as the shortages of steel, gasoline, and rub-ber made driving an automobile impractical. Children scavenged lard, newspapers, and metal both at home and door to door, bring-ing their offerings to school for recycling on trucks provided by the city. High schools offered a special defense curriculum that divided the school day between academics and vocational training for the war effort. In fact, the war had affected patterns within the valley even before the Pearl Harbor attack. The Nazi occupation of Belgium had an immediate impact in Murray because Belgium's smelters were lost to world production and the spreading conflagration raised the demand for processed metals. Murray smelters that had been closing for as long as six months each year during the Depression now extended their seasons, and the county economy responded. During the war years, both the American Refining and Smelting Company and the International Refining and Smelting Company expanded greatly, providing jobs and pumping money into the econ-omy. Yet even with the war-inspired shift toward defense and min-ing, farms continued to prosper throughout the south end of the valley. Statewide, cash farm income leaped from $44 million in 1938 to $8 1 million in 1942.40 Alta, in Little Cottonwood Canyon, also was affected. The moun-tain town had gained a second life in the 1930s when businessmen and skiers organized the Salt Lake City Winter Sports Association and negotiated with the United States Forest Service to construct a ski lift. The lift was operational by January 1939, international downhill and slalom races began in March 1940, and the Alta Lodge and Alta Ski School appeared late that year." With war Fort Douglas trucked in paratroopers fresh from jump school at Fort Benning, Georgia. Ski instructors taught soldiers the snowplow position with instructions to fall to the rear if their speed became excessive; however, the grab-your-knees-and-roll-forward position had been so engrained in jump school that it carried over on the ski slopes. Recalled one instructor, Dick Nebeker: "It was horrifying to Skiing became a winter sport in Salt Lake County prior to World War 11. The Alta Lodge and Alta Ski School opened in 1940. Heavy snowfall made the Wasatch Mountains ideal for skiing but getting to the ski slopes was often difficult. (Utah State Historical Society) watch them pick up too much speed . . . and revert to their jump training. . . . They'd roll ass over applecart, and all their buddies would laugh and dare them to try it again.'"2 The troops persevered, nevertheless, as their wool olive-drab overcoats collected several pounds of melted snow in the tumbles down the slopes. On the other hand, skiers interested in enlisting could volunteer for the ski troops and be assigned to Camp Hale in nearby Leadville, Colorado, another former mining town. More than 50,000 military personnel would be stationed in Utah. Following the Pearl Harbor attack, the Ninth Service Command, which directed military operations west of the Rockies, moved its headquarters from the Presidio, San Francisco, to Fort Douglas. The fort also served as a finance center and directed the repair of military When the Ninth Service Command came in January 1942, Salt Lake City scrambled to place one hundred and fifty families in tem- SOUPLINEANSD SURVIVA1L9,3 0-1 950 191 porary quarters and to make permanent arrangements to house incoming troops. The housing shortage was such that finally sixty trailers were parked near the University of Utah stadium for army employees until facilities at the fort could be completed. Meanwhile, city and county officials worried about 3,500 war workers due to arrive and found a site on Salt Lake City's west side. Homes in the Glendale Gardens housing project went up quickly and cheaply, designed to meet the needs of the incoming families. Additional housing units were undertaken by the private sector.44 The army also opened a small arms plant north of Chesterfield between 194 1 and 1944. As a result, by 1947 Chesterfield could boast two thousand new residents, natural gas lines, and plans for water and sewer systems.'' The Kearns Army Base opened one-half mile west of Taylorsville and two miles southwest of Granger, offering basic training to more than 90,000 airmen by 1943. Streets, water mains, electricity, and a sewage system appeared rapidly during April and May 1942 as the temporary base took shape. Its more than nine hundred tarpaper-covered buildings included two gymnasiums, three theaters, three fire stations, two service clubs, sixteen mess halls, and a ten-wing hospital capable of serving one thousand patients. A railroad station, bank, post office, library, four chapels, shops, and a telegraph office served personnel. Later lawn, trees, and shrubs completed the base.46 Named for Senator Thomas Kearns, the base served primarily to train Air Corps personnel. The Second Air Force conducted specialty schools for gunners and ground crews, including some from the 509th Composite Group who became involved at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The base also became a release point for personnel who were needed in defense industries on the West Coast. Kearns evolved, in fact, as the state's third largest city, and it claimed the state's second largest hospital. Even with Salt Lake City thirty-five minutes away by bus, airmen complained about "a lack of entertainment, limited U.S.0 facilities, and an archaic Sunday clos-ing ~rdinance.'"M~ eanwhile their wives despaired of too few apart-ments in the area and inadequate public transportation. The Kearns Army Base, nevertheless, was a boon for the local economy. When, in 1947, the government declared it post-war sur- plus, prominent citizens objected to the base's demise. "Here in the suburbs of Salt Lake City, they argued, the Army had laid out a model city" at a cost of more than $1.8 million. In response, the War Assets Administration opened the "fenced-in ghost town" to public bidding, and the townsite became a fast-growing community especially as military-related industries increased in the southwest valley.48 Within the first year after America went to war, 13,000 new jobs opened in Salt Lake City alone as defense industries proliferated. Two-thirds of the new jobs were filled by county residents. The new Remington Small Arms Plant on Redwood Road at Seventeenth South employed as many as 10,000 people until 1943. The Utah Oil Refinery expanded to increase production of gasoline and, in 1945, set a world production record of forty gallons of 100-octane gasoline from one hundred gallons of crude oil. In addition, Kennecott Copper Corporation expanded. The copper mills at Magna and Arthur which had been compromised and closed during the Depression now operated at 125 percent of their previous capacity. Women went to war as well as men, with a quarter of a million serving in the armed forces and millions working in war-production plants. As volunteers, they worked through clubs, the American Red Cross, and the US0 to promote the war effort. In Utah in 1940 one woman in six earned an income, the second lowest proportion in the nation. During the war, however, 24,000 women entered the workforce and in areas that had previously been unavailable. On a far greater scale than during World War I, women drove taxis, buses, and trucks, loaded ammunition, and shouldered other non-traditional tasks. Many hired on as permanent employees; by 1950, as a result, one woman in four worked outside the home.49 Despite new opportunities, women's wages lagged behind men's. Working amid the clamor and danger of the Remington Small Arms Plant, Dorothy Lemmon reported earning 5 1 cents per hour to start, raised to 84 cents with experience. "The men were paid more. At that time it didn't bother me. I was just thankful that I could work and make a little bit."50 Once again, child care became a priority, and the WPA opened sixteen child care centers in 1942. The Granite School District helped SOUPLINEASN D SURVIVA1L9,3 0-1 950 193 meet the demand, opening its War-Time Child Care facilities between 1943 and 1945. The effects of the influx of troops and commerce were measur-ably dramatic. For decades Utah had lagged behind the national aver-age in personal income. In 1940 even as federal programs loosened the Depression's stranglehold, personal income remained at 8 1.8 per-cent of the national average; however, by 1943 it rose to slightly above the national a~erage.~' Meanwhile the valley's population increased rapidly with nearly 40,000 new residents moving in by 1943. The influx threw employ-ment and housing patterns into chaos. Now people could meet their mortgages and pay their rent, but there were not enough homes for the population. Young couples signed waiting lists, meanwhile mov-ing in with parents and relatives. Salt Lake City set up a Home Registration Bureau to help incoming workers find housing. In rural areas of the valley, recreation programs provided by civic groups such as the Kiwanis and Lion's Club found it difficult to cope with post-war growth. On 22 May 1945, the Granite Recreation Association addressed the problem at a meeting of the Granite School District. A committee formed to contact the Jordan School District first then, thus strengthened, to approach the Salt Lake County Commission with the idea of providing an all-year recre-ational program throughout the county, available to both youth and adults. Not quite a year later, on 1 May 1946, Salt Lake County Recreation was born and its first park, East Millcreek, dedicated ten days later. Thirty additional parks would follow during the next forty years, along with recreation centers and satellite sites. Eventually county recreation would offer basketball, baseball, golf, soccer, vol-leyball, and numerous other sports and activities to county residents valley-wide.52 In various ways, the war changed the fortunes of minority racial and ethnic groups within the valley. For instance, the small African- American population in Salt Lake increased nearly fourfold during the war years, rising from about seven hundred to 2,500 by the war's end. When defense-related jobs declined, the black community shrank, dropping to about 1,130. Even given the honor inherent in a military uniform during war years, African-American troops were entertained by a separate US0 in Salt Lake City. There was a natural tendency for groups to cling together; for instance, Jewish troops found solace in Saturday night dances and dinners provided by the city's Jewish community. Racial segregation, however, was another matter. One volunteer, a Jewish upper-class immigrant from the Austro- Hungarian Empire, became a US0 short-order cook with the black USO. "This was the only place they could get meals," Emma Helwing related. "They often told me their woe about not being admitted to any restaurant in town. I felt ashamed and bewildered that such things happen in a democracy. . . .7753 She was not alone. Myron Q. Hale, then a young clerk at the Hotel Utah, retained a painful memory from the war years. He was forced by hotel policy to ignore rooms sitting vacant and offer a dec-orated officer who had lost an arm in the war a seat in the lobby throughout one long night. Ordinarily, the clerks referred black patrons to the Newhouse Hotel which had integrated, but that par-ticular night it was fU11.54 Anti-German sentiment rose nationwide during both world wars, but Japanese-Americans felt the brunt of prejudice during World War 11. Salt Lake County was no exception. Signs proclaiming, "No Japs Wanted Here" appeared in the windows of hotels and restaurants, some people of Japanese descent lost their jobs, and their children were heckled by playmates. When the Chamber of Commerce asked the city council to prohibit business licenses from Japanese Americans, the Salt Lake City Federation of Labor backed it Already these citizens had been prohibited by the legislature from buying or leasing land. Seventy Japanese-Americans employed by the railroads and liv-ing in Copperfield were so dismayed and fearful after the attack on Pearl Harbor that they "passively invited deputy sheriffs into their homes and handed over whatever firearms they They contin-ued to work although their wages were withheld. Several Salt Lakers of Japanese ancestry were even less fortunate; they were forced to join eight thousand others, primarily from the West Coast, in Topaz, an internment camp in Central Utah's desert. SOUPLINEASN D SURVIVA1L9,3 0-1 950 195 Grace notes of compassion occasionally lightened the bitterness brought by the war's emotionalism. When the national headquarters of the Japanese American Citizens League and the American Buddhist Church temporarily moved to Salt Lake City from San Francisco, Mayor Ab Jenkins (a former race car driver) met them at the state line and welcomed them to the city." Also, Unitarian minis-ter J. Raymond Cope encouraged the young people in his congrega-tion to correspond with young residents of the Topaz camp. Some children stayed in touch long after the armistice allowed the citizens detained in the camp to return home.58 In contrast, World War I1 revitalized and altered the valley's Hispanic community. The United States government established the Emergency Labor Program, drawing Mexican braceros to agricultural regions in the nation and around five hundred Puerto Ricans to the copper mines. In Salt Lake County, however, most Spanish-speaking workers came from Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas, working in mining, agriculture, defense, and on the railroads. This influx of Mexican-Americans somewhat diminished the influence of traditional Mexican culture within the valley's Spanish-speaking community. Between 1944 and 1952 several Spanish-speaking organizations formed to help protect civil rights and prolong cultural heritage, including the Centro Civico Mexicano in Salt Lake City. During the coming decades, the community further diversified with immigrants from South and Central America bringing new perspectives, customs, and talent^.^' Victory in Europe and Victory in Japan days brought crowds of celebrants into the streets, special church services, and days off work. Peace also brought concomitant adjustments. Military personnel returned to the valley, crowding housing, the job market, and uni-versity enrollment. They brought with them broadened experience and new attitudes. The impact upon minority communities was immediate. Hispanic and African-American soldiers, in particular, had become accustomed to a new level of respect. They now envisioned greater opportunities for education and employment. Attitudes changed slowly within the valley. In 1948 the Salt Lake Chapter of the NAACP Bells rang, sirens blew, newspapers printed extra editions, and people crowded the streets in every community in the county with the announce-ment of Victory in Europe and Victory over Japan, the latter seen here in Salt Lake City. (Utah State Historical Society) protested the refusal of management at the City-County Building lunch counter to serve African-Americans. The city commission agreed to meet their demands. Meanwhile many first- and second-generation Mexican-Americans, eager to escape the culture and lan-guage of their parents concentrated on entering the mainstream. Valley-wide, post-war housing was at a premium. In January 1946, the Utah chapter of the National Association of Home Builders announced plans to build one thousand low-cost homes. That same year, however, the Federal Housing Administration estimated that Salt Lake faced a shortage of six thousand housing units. Jobs were scarce also. Swiftly the notion of women working in factories, driving buses, or otherwise filling positions men wanted changed from patriotic to undesirable and unattractive. Meanwhile the reuniting of families boosted consumerism around cottage life to SOUPLINEASN D SURVIVA1L9, 30-1 950 197 The postwar period brought a new emphasis on domesticity and youth, nuclear families and station wagons. Urban people sought the suburbs and commuted to their jobs. Farm families found sprouting subdivisions an irresistible cash crop. (Utah State Historical Society) new heights, and people focused on tightening and expanding domestic bonds. The LDS birthrate in the valley hit a post-war high of 38 per 1,000, 11 points above the national average/' Yet women continued to hold their numbers in the work force? Even during the war, and despite a drop in university enrollment, the war effort had allowed the University of Utah to expand its med-ical school to four years. The planning, which began in 194 1, was encouraged by both the United States Army and the American Medical Association since no four-year medical schools existed in the region.62T he university still lacked adequate research facilities and a nearby teaching hospital; however, its pioneering spirit drew medical talent which then attracted research grants. By 1952 the largest por-tion of the medical school's budget would be drawn from research, and some projects would claim world attention decades later. Following the war, enrollment at the University of Utah skyrock-eted, passing five thousand, bolstered by federal aid to soldiers seek- ing an education. The new university president, A. Ray Olpin, began a major program of expansion and improvements. Everywhere, it seemed, public schools struggled to find room for the waves of chil-dren entering classrooms each year. In a valley weary of hardship and peril, lifeways eagerly trans-formed to fit the new national vision of peace and prosperity. Yet the valley's unique mix of powers continued, unabated by change. One lighthearted venture, in fact, spawned a controversy that illustrated the way local politics worked in the late 1940s, and it forecast the ambience of the coming decades. Professional football had a fling, beginning one windy Sunday in September 1946. Organized by fifteen businessmen in the Chamber of Commerce Building, the Salt Lake Seagulls joined the nine-team Pacific Coast Football League, a western counterpart to the National Football League in the East. More than six thousand spectators gath-ered on bleachers at the Utah State Fairgrounds on North Temple and Tenth West streets to witness the first game.63 Team president Frank L. Christensen, a former University of Utah All-American, stepped onto the field to inaugurate the team. He booted an oversized football, which split to release a flock of live seag-ulls. The dazed birds failed to fly, prompting quarterback Dee Chipman to later observe that their lassitude might well have been a portent. Indeed, the Seagulls's brief history was plagued by financial trou-bles and a lack of professional management. During its second and last season, the team attempted to draw fans by staging games at Derks Field (named posthumously for Tribune sports editor John Derks) on Thirteenth South and West Temple, and at Fairmont Park on Ninth East in Sugarhouse. The team's demise that year preceded the league's failure in 194W4 The controversy during the Seagulls's brief stay in the valley swirled around Salt Lake City parks commissioner Fred Tedesco, a former college football star who coached and managed the team. Anticipating the first season, Tedesco enlisted city personnel and resources to sod the fairgrounds' field and improve the bleachers. This use of city resources was not unprecedented; in June, for SOUPLINEASN D SURVIVA1L9, 30-1950 199 instance, his department had transported and erected bleachers for the LDS church's annual dance festival. Tedesco had also pushed the improvements on the bleachers ahead of schedule, so they would be ready in time for the Days of '47 Rodeo in July. Once city employees set about installing a sprinkling system and sodding the field for the football season, certain workers became uncomfortable because the improvements would benefit a private concern. Rather than taking their conflict to Tedesco, the mayor, the city attorney, or the city commission, they made an appointment with David 0. McKay, second counselor in the LDS First Presidency. McKay then met with the mayor, the commissioners, and the city attorney. The resulting furor raged around Tedesco on the pages of the Deseret News and became a scandala6' Immediately Tedesco made a public statement, presented a detailed report, and gave the city a check to cover the improvements; however, talk spread of empaneling a grand jury to indict, and the assumption grew that Tedesco and possibly his assistants would go to prison. Klea Tedesco, the commissioner's wife and president of the ladies' auxiliary of the Utah Municipal League, cannily went to the same source enjoined by the parks employees. She met with McKay alone, then she and her husband sat down with him again. The controversy ended as abruptly as it had begun. Even the Deseret News broadened the discussion to include the appropriate use of city resources which evidently had not been at issue before? Apparently in 1946 no one questioned why city employees had sought the intervention of a top Mormon leader rather than following a grievance procedure within city government-or why a counselor in the First Presidency felt comfortable convening city officials to report a conflict. Clearly the city officials, the media, and the legal system responded to McKay's concern with vigor, and the resulting tumult was quelled just as quickly. The aplomb surrounding this small scandal illustrated the val-ley's power structure then and in future decades. It signaled the immediate future, for the genial McKay would continue a hands-on influence in secular affairs. Like a few before him, he personified his time and place. As the first non-polygamist president in 195 1, he stood firmly within the social and cultural mainstream; and as the first LDS president to hold a college diploma, he emphasized educa-tion, a strong post-war trend. Family life, education, and prosperity in a peaceful neighbor-hood were the ideals increasingly evident within Salt Lake County, even as they grew nationwide. Hard-earned by decades of depriva-tion and war, these goals seemed as worthy as deserved. During the tumultuous 1930~-40st,h e Salt Lake Valley had proven its worth as an inextricable part of America, as well a capital county. Meanwhile both depression and war had forged links between Salt Lake County and federal programs, policies, and related industries. These bonds tethered any instinct to reclaim an autonomous posture toward the world beyond the valley. Growth itself had not only accompanied but perpetuated change. In 1930 Salt Lake County had embraced 194,102 people. By 1950, 274,895 residents lived in a more crowded, aware, and experienced populace. Hard times were not forgotten, making prosperity all the sweeter. Military industry had bloomed as the economy's darling; meanwhile the federal government had become a constant if criti-cized partner in numerous regards. Significant, though less visible than the prevailing social, politi-cal, and economic trends, was the reality that numerous individuals had risen to the overall challenges, only to be thanked and essentially dismissed. People of color found their status reduced when the war ended; working women were encouraged to go home. Yet their achievements and heightened expectations would pend, then awaken again, as valley life stabilized. The events that had spanned and shaken the world during these decades had inflicted and compelled Salt Lake County's wholehearted participation. In the meantime, newsreels, travel, and military service inexorably linked its peoples in myriad new ways to the once-distant world. 1. John S. McCormick, Salt Lake City: The Gathering Place (Woodland Hills, California: Windsor Publications, 1980), 74. 2. Roland Stucki, Commercial Banking in Utah, 1847-1966 (Salt Lake SOUPLINEASN D SURVIVA19L3,0 -1 950 20 1 City: Bureau of Economic and Business Research, University of Utah, 1967), 43-46. 3. Melvin L. Bashore and Scott Crump, Riverton: The Story of a Utah Country Town (Riverton: Riverton Historical Society, 1994), 133. 4. Thomas G. Alexander and James B. Allen, Mormons and Gentiles: A History of Salt Lake City (Boulder, Colorado: Pruett Publishing Co., 1984), 203-204,263. 5. Leonard J. Arrington, The Richest Hole on Earth (Logan: Utah State University, 1963), 67-68. 6. McCormick, Salt Lake City, 79. 7. Alexander and Allen, Mormons and Gentiles, 204-5. 8. McCormick, Salt Lake City, 77. 9. Alexander and Allen, Mormons and Gentiles, 200. 10. Michael J. Gorrell, The History of West Valley City, 1848-1 990 (West Valley City: West Valley City Civic Committee, 1993), 8-9. 1 1. Ibid., 9. 12. Wesley G. Johnson and David Schirer, Between the Cottonwoods: Murray City in Transition (Salt Lake City and Provo: Timpanogos Research Associates, 1992), 6. 13. Alexander and Allen, Mormons and Gentiles, 159. 14. Ronald G. Coleman, "Blacks in Utah History: An Unknown Legacy," Peoples of Utah, Helen Z. Papanikolas, ed. (Salt Lake City: Utah State Historical Society, 1967), 137-38. 15. Linda Sillitoe Friendly Fire: The ACLU in Utah (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1996). 16. Coleman, "Blacks in Utah," 137-38. 17. Carol A. Edison, Anne F. Hatch, and Craig R. Miller, eds., Hecho en Utah (Salt Lake City: Utah Arts Council, 1992), 14-15. 18. Vicente V. Mayer, "After Escalante: The Spanish-Speaking People of Utah," Peoples of Utah, 459-60. 19. Bernice Maher Mooney and Jerome C. Stoffel, eds., Salt of the Earth: The History of the Catholic Diocese of Salt Lake City, 1776-1987 (Salt Lake City: Catholic Diocese of Utah, 1987), 197,213. 20. Charles S. Peterson, Utah: A History (New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 1977, 1984), 176. 21. Alexander and Allen, Mormons and Gentiles, 2 10-12,220. 22. Beverly B. Clopton, Her Honor, the Judge: The Story of Reva Beck Bosone (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1980), 8. 23. Miriam B. Murphy, "'Of Benefit and Interest to the Children of Salt Lake City'-the Tracy Aviary," Utah Historical Quarterly 48 ( 1980): 26 1-70. 24. H.S. Crane, "Allen Park: A Salt Lake City Sanctuary," Catalyst, July 1994, 22. 25. Nancy D. McCormick and John S. McCormick, Saltair (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1985), 68-70, 80. 26. Coleman, "Blacks in Utah," 136. 27. Cherie Willis, "The Utah Symphony," Utah History Encyclopedia, Allan Kent Powell, ed. (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1994), 605-606. 28. Marion Dunn, Bingham Canyon (Salt Lake City: Publishers Press, 1973), 117-19. 29. Ibid. 30. Ronald R. Bateman, "South Jordan," Utah History Encyclopedia, 514. 3 1. Bashore and Crump, Riverton, 15 1-60. 32. Ibid., 155. 33. Ibid. 34. Ibid. 35. Ibid. 36. Dale L. Morgan, The Great Salt Lake (New York: Bobbs Merrill, 1947), 27. 37. Ibid. 38. Alexander and Allen, Mormons and Gentiles, 212-13. 39. Ibid., 235. 40. Johnson and Shirer, Between the Cottonwoods, 52. 41. Patricia Lyn Scott, "Alta: Mining and Skiing Center," Utah Encyclopedia, 7-8. 42. Allan Kent Powell, Utah Remembers World War II (Logan: Utah State University Press, 199 I), 60-6 1. 43. Charles G. Hibbard, "Fort Douglas," Utah History Encyclopedia, 199. 44. Alexander and Allen, Mormons and Gentiles, 24 1-42. 45. Gorrell, History of West Valley City, 9. 46. Thomas G. Alexander, "Brief Histories of Three Federal Military Installations in Utah: Kearns Army Air Base, Hurricane Mesa, and Green River Text Complex," Utah Historical Quarterly 34 ( 1966): 124-26. 47. Ibid., 126. 48. Ibid. SOUPLINEASN D SURVIVA19L3,0 -1950 203 49. Maureen Ursenbach Beecher and Kathryn L. McKay, "Women in Twentieth-century Utah," Utah's History, Richard D. Poll et al., eds. (Logan: Utah State University Press, 1989), 58 1-82. 50. Powell, Utah Remembers World War 11, 158-59. 5 1. John E. Christensen, "The Impact of World War 11," Utah's History, 505. 52. Salt Lake County recreation report, 1995, in possession of the author. 53. Powell, Utah Remembers World War 11, 206-7. 54. A letter describing this incident is in possession of the author. 55. Alexander and Allen, Mormons and Gentiles, 240. 56. Lynn R. Bailey, Old Reliable: A History of Bingharn Canyon, Utah (Tucson, Arizona: Westernlore Press, 1988), 169. 57. Ibid., 240. 58. Stan Larson and Lorille Miller, Unitarianism in Utah, 1891 -1 991 (Salt Lake City: Freethinker Press, 199 I), 1 13-14. 59. Edison, Hatch, and Miller, Hecho en Utah, 15,20. 60. Alexander and Allen, Mormons and Gentiles, 26 1. 6 1. Beecher and MacKay, "Women in Twentieth-century Utah," 581-82. 62. Alexander and Allen, Mormons and Gentiles, 26 1. 63. Melvin L. Bashore, "The Salt Lake Seagulls Professional Football Team," Utah Historical Quarterly 6 1 (1 993): 6-9. 64. Ibid. 65. Ibid. 66. Ibid.