Arts and Humanities Commons^™

The Swett Homestead: An Oral History 1909-1970, Eric G. Swedin

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Making extensive use of oral interviews with the surviving children, this thesis is an biography of Oscar and Emma Swett and their children, who lived on a homestead in Greendale, Utah, (near Flaming Gorge Reservoir) from 1909 to 1970. The family is representative of a group of families who moved to Greendale and engaged in small-scale cattle ranching. The introduction of new technology changed their lifestyles and homestead economics, while simultaneously Greendale evolved from a rural agricultural environment to become part of a National Recreation Area.

Mining The Colorado Plateau: The Story Of Calamity Mesa 1910-1970, Lisa Pitcher Godfrey

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This thesis was written to outline the history of five stone houses, which have survived almost a century of mining activity. The houses are located on a barren mesa, called Calamity, in southwestern Colorado. This work was funded by the Bureau of Land Management, Department of the Interior, in order to explore the possibility of designating this site as a National Historic Site.

Men and women lived and worked on this and the surrounding mesas for most of the twentieth century. The lives of the families, the men, women, and children who lived and worked on Calamity Mesa, provided the …

Creating Ethnicity In The Hydraulic Village Of The Mormon West, Charles M. Hatch

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This study has looked behind the mask of nineteenth-century theocracy to see Mormons in the Great Basin creating a democratic society of regionally concentrated kin groups where obligations and rewards for individuals were increasingly determined by age and life cycle position. As generations of young adults acted together in self-interest dispersing their villages on receding frontiers, they forged a balance between competition and cooperation which merged the immediate need of individuals to establish and support families with the collective memory of their Mormon past. In so doing, they created an identity for themselves which was unique in the arid West. …