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Show 100th anniversary for Vernal settlement By Mike W. Brown After a six month vacation, 'The Past Relived' is ready to live again. It is a pleasure to share the history of Uintah County and Ashley Valley once more. History is traditionally a boring subject. sub-ject. Remember those long, tedious histjory ,.c,las8f$s - in school? Hopefully these stories will ease the ho-hums of listening to and reading about history. History is especially important to us in this year of 1980 A.D. This year not only marks the approximate 100th anniversary of the settling of the community now called Vernal, but is also the centennial of Uintah County as a political entity. It is hard to imagine that there are people in the area today whose parents and grandparents were the original settlers of the Uintah County. One of the most significant reasons why this year is so important is because there is not much left in the County that was built here 100 years ago, or even 40 years ago for that matter. During the past four years, more historic public buildings have been destroyed than in any other period in the last 100 years. This type of phenomena usually occurs in the West when a community experiences ex-periences rapid growth, such as the Uintah Basin is in the midst of now. Changes of attitude are needed, otherwise the physical history of Uintah County in the form of buildings and structures will be a memory of the past and limited to fading photographs. THE LATE SETTLEMENT OF UINTAH COUNTY When looking at an historic map of the settlement of Utah, one notices that Uintah County and Ashley Valley were practically the last areas in the entire state to be settled. We are just barely . 100 years old as a community, if the Hard Winter of 1879-80 can be used as a yardstick of time. Almost every other town in Utah is at least 10 years and generally 25 years older than Vernal-Why? Vernal-Why? When Brigham Young and the pioneers first came to Utah and Salt Lake, they expanded north along the Wasatch Front and south into Utah's Dixie. All during this time Young had heard the trappers' reports of the fabulous area of eastern Utah, and after several years finally decided to investigate. At the Spring Conference in 1861, he announced his intention of sending a number of families to colonize the Uintah Basin. A preliminary exploring and surveying party was sent without delay. On September 25, 1861, the Deseret News gave the report of the party the Uintah areas were not what they had thought. The fertile valleys, extensive meadows and wide pasture ranges were not found. As a result of this report, Brigham Young gave up the idea of colonization of the Basin and therefore did not object to it being set aside as an Indian reservation, since white men didn't want the land then. One explanation for this is that the exploration party might have seen the barren wastelands in the southern part of Uintah County and not the more verdant northern sections. Later, procedural grounds. With authorization in HR 4788 to add 1,050,000 kilowatts (KW) of capacity of hydropower by such construction, the Administration will have difficulty continuing to oppose this project officially. of-ficially. Cost is estimated at $579 million, but its benefit-cost ratio is 2.6-1. 2.6-1. A battle is brewing between Sen. John Melcher, D-Mont., who favors a reregulating dam with three power units totalling 76,400 KW at Lobby Dam on the Kootenai River in Montana, and Rep. Pat Williams, D-Mont., who got ' the project deleted from HR 4788 by amendment on Jan. 29 on grounds of local opposition and questions raised about the need for the project, which would cost $46,300,000... Orme Dam in Maricopa County, Ariz., and Warm Springs Dam in Sonomo County, Calif., are proposed as demonstration projects in HR 4788 to allow construction of the dams while, at the same time, giving the Corps authority to protect and enhance fish and wildlife habitat in each area. however, as early settlers moved in, the misconceptions were corrected and the area was settled. Later still as the population expanded, parts of the Reservation also were opened for white settlement in 1905 and Uintah County grew to what it is today. |