Utah Trivia & Tidbits - Page 14

Looking for Utah trivia? Try our list Utah little know facts, tidbits and trivia.

Edge of the Cedars State Park in Blanding (pop. 3,162) includes the remains of a pre-Columbian (before Columbus) Pueblo Indian village and a museum featuring a collection of Anasazi pottery. The pueblo ruin is on the National and Utah Registers of Historic Places.

first appeared: 10/6/2002

The official state cooking pot is the Dutch oven, so designated by the Utah State Legislature in 1997. The covered iron pot, indispensable to pioneers of the early 1800s, is still popular with those who use the three-legged pots to bake breads, make fruit cobblers, and cook stews.

first appeared: 9/29/2002

Among the attractions at the Utah Field House of Natural History State Park and Museum at Vernal (pop. 6,644) are life-size replicas of the Tyrannosaurus rex, prehistoric fluorescent minerals, fossil skeletal reproductions, and other pieces of natural history from the Uinta Mountains and Uinta Basin.

first appeared: 9/22/2002

The site of the first permanent Anglo settlement in Utah’s Great Basin is located in Ogden, where Miles Goodyear, a mountain man from Connecticut, built Fort Buenaventura as a trading post in 1845. It was re-named Brown’s Fort after the man who bought it two years later, and the settlement was later named Ogden after an early explorer, Peter Ogden.

first appeared: 9/15/2002

Pioneering Mormons settling the far southwestern corner of the state took advantage of the region’s mild climate to grow cotton. As a result, the area became known as Utah’s Dixie.

first appeared: 9/8/2002

The 1888 Manti Temple overlooking the town of Manti contains more than 100,000 square feet of floor space and is built of cream-colored limestone quarried from the hill where the temple stands.

first appeared: 9/1/2002

Topaz, found in Beaver, Juab, and Tooele counties, is the official state gem. Ancient Greeks thought that wearing topaz could make one invisible during emergencies.

first appeared: 8/25/2002

Perhaps the most well-known landmark in Zion National Park is the Great White Throne, a 2,400-foot sandstone tower above the Virgin River. Its color varies from red at the base to white at the top because the stone has less iron oxide at the higher reaches.

first appeared: 8/18/2002

Hoop, a 5-year-old golden retriever from Salt Lake City, was inducted into the Utah Animal Hall of Fame two years ago for his therapy work in aiding the recovery of victims of stroke, brain surgery, abuse, and other disabilities.

first appeared: 8/11/2002

The Lincoln Highway, built in 1915, went from New York to San Francisco and passed through Utah. Today’s Interstate 80 follows much of the historic road through the state.

first appeared: 8/11/2002

The state’s emblem—a beehive—signified the importance of industry and the pioneer virtues of thrift and perseverance when it was chosen to symbolize the provisional state in 1848. It remained on the seal when Utah became a state in 1896.

first appeared: 8/4/2002

Airplane passenger service in Utah began in 1926 with flights to Los Angeles. Airmail service began in the state in 1920.

first appeared: 7/28/2002

Camp Floyd/Stagecoach Inn State Park, near Fairfield (pop. 150), is the site of a former over-night stop on the pony express mail route. A two-story adobe and frame hotel equipped with original period furnishings provides a look back at conditions in the mid-1800s when the express ran through.

first appeared: 7/28/2002

Utah State University in Logan has roots going back to 1890, when it was created as the Agricultural College of Utah. The flagship building is Old Main, built in three phases beginning in 1889 and registered as a historic site.

first appeared: 7/21/2002

The history of mining in Beaver County includes the rich Horn Silver Mine discovered in 1875. Famed financier J. Pierpont Morgan was among the Horn’s investors. The boomtown of Frisco was founded nearby in 1876.

first appeared: 7/14/2002

Grand County in east-central Utah was named for the Colorado River, which originally was called the Grand River. The county’s attractions include Arches National Park, Dead Horse Point State Park, and the LaSal Mountains.

first appeared: 7/7/2002

Utah’s first governor after statehood was also its youngest to date. Heber Manning Wells was 36 when he took office. The Salt Lake City native—previously a tax collector, city recorder, and secretary of the Utah Constitutional Convention in 1895—served from 1896 through 1905.

first appeared: 6/30/2002

Utah’s official state bird, the California gull, might sound more at home in another western state, but it occupies an important place in Utah history. The Legislature officially embraced the bird in 1955, honoring an event that took place over 100 years earlier. In 1848, flocks of California gulls were credited with saving crops during a cricket infestation. The birds flew in and ate the pests before the crickets could devastate the crops.

first appeared: 6/23/2002

The oddly eroded rock formations of Bryce Canyon National Park in southern Utah are called “hoodoos,” because their strange shapes give them the look of goblins. The Paiute Indians called the formations “Legend People.” They may resemble giant mystical people, but the pillars were formed as the result of rock erosion through the eons on the Paunsaugunt Plateau. Since rock layers vary in strength, they tend to erode at different rates, forming irregular and fascinating shapes.

first appeared: 6/16/2002

Halls Crossing in southern Utah is the site of a marina on Lake Powell, but in the early 1880s it was an important crossing for people trying to establish settlements in the southeastern part of what would become Utah. The traverse is named for Charles Hall, who first ferried settlers across the Colorado River in 1879. The trip came to be known as the Hole-in-the-Rock trip, because travelers chipped rock from a natural crack in the cliff to build a path to the river.

first appeared: 6/9/2002

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