WPA Writers’ Program — American Guide Series2.0

When Lansford W. Hastings published his “Emigrant’s Guide to Oregon and California” at Cincinnati in 1845, urging the cutoff that bore his name across the Salt Desert, he produced the first guidebook to treat even partially the country that is now Utah — and his bravado led wagon travelers such as the Donner party to tragedy. This guide, the Utah preface notes wryly, is the more conservative descendant of that first attempt: one of a series prepared for automobile travelers on the hard roads of the forty-eight States, it warns the motorist plainly of rough stretches, quicksands, and waterless deserts, and treats the lesser-known country cautiously and without the old Hastings swagger.

Like its companion volumes, the book confesses to a collective author. In sifting thousands of facts from some fifteen million words of field material, the staff admitted it had no doubt fallen short here and there, and it invited substantiated corrections toward a future edition. Local, county, State, and Federal agencies, transportation firms, motor clubs, newspapers, and hundreds of individuals furnished and checked material; the University of Utah, the Utah State Agricultural College, and Brigham Young University all helped in special fields. The Utah Art Project supplied the maps and decorations, and the Utah Historical Records Survey opened its files for the history essay and the chronology.

Dale L. Morgan, the project’s State Supervisor, signed the preface and credited Maurice L. Howe and Charles K. Madsen with gathering much of the factual matter, with final editorial work done under the WPA Writers’ Program. A foreword by Gail Martin opens the volume. Population figures throughout were drawn from the preliminary 1940 census reports, subject to slight correction when the final tabulation appeared. Sponsored by the Utah State Institute of Fine Arts and co-sponsored by the Salt Lake County Commission, the guide was first published in 1941 and reprinted in 1945.

The contents move from background to road. Part I gathers fourteen essays on Utah’s setting and story — the contemporary scene, natural setting, archeology and Indians, history, the Mormon Church, agriculture, irrigation, mining, and the arts. Part II describes the Bonneville bench cities of Logan, Ogden, Provo, and Salt Lake City. Part III, “Highways and Dugways,” lays out ten numbered tours with their lettered branches, and Part IV gathers the parks and primitive areas — from Arches, Bryce Canyon, and Zion to the High Uintas, Rainbow Bridge, and the Great Salt Lake — closing with a chronology, a selected reading list, and an index.