Utah History for Kids

Area: ,255 square miles
Population (2000): 14,371
County Seat: Duchesne
Origin of County Name: after the Duchesne River which was possibly named for a French-Canadian trapper
Principal Cities/Towns: Roosevelt (4,299), Duchesne (1,408), Myton (539);
Economy: livestock, alfalfa and hay, oil, natural gas
Points of Interest: High Uintas Wilderness Area, Starvation Reservoir, Big Sand Wash Reservoir

Traditional Ute bear dance on the Uintah Reservation early 20th century.

What is the land like?
The Uinta Mountains, the only east-west running mountain range in the United States, lie in the north part of Duchesne County. The state's highest mountain, King's Peak (13,528 feet above sea level) is located in the county's Uinta Mountains. During the Ice Age, many glaciers carved the Uintas. Today, the many lakes that dot the mountains are remnants of the glaciers. The Uintas are also the major source for four important rivers: the Bear, the Weber, the Provo, and the Green. Major streams running through the county include the Strawberry, Duchesne, Lake Fork, and Yellowstone rivers.

The Uinta Basin is much drier than the mountains to the north. The southern rim of the basin is formed by the Tavaputs Plateau. The western rim is formed by the Wasatch Mountains.

The center of the basin ranges in elevation from 5,000 to 5,500 feet.

Prehistory
From 10,000 to 6,500 B.C., people in the Uinta Basin hunted big game such as mammoth and bison. During the next 6,000 years, called the Archaic period, people gathered plant foods in addition to hunting. People called the Fremont Indians came next. They lived in houses that were partly underground (called pithouses). They knew how to farm corn as well as to hunt and gather wild plants.

A band of Utes called the Uinta-ats lived in the Uinta Basin beginning in about A.D. 1300. Northern and Northwestern Shoshones sometimes visited the basin. At that time, the basin was a rich provider of food and clothing.

The Utes
After Anglo-Americans moved to Utah, their leaders wanted to move the Ute Indians off the lands in northern and central Utah, where many of the new settlers lived. So President Abraham Lincoln created a in the Uinta Basin in 1861. Most northern Utes were forced to move there. In the 1880s the government created the Ouray Reservation south of the Uintah Reservation and moved Utes from Colorado to both reservations.

But the Utes did not even get to keep their arid reservations. In the early 1900s, the U.S. government decided to make the Indians into farmers. They gave members of the three tribes individual parcels of land.

They then took part of the reservation lands to create the Uinta National Forest and Strawberry Reservoir.

After that, they threw open the rest of the reservation to Anglo-American homesteaders.

This left the Uintah-Ouray Reservation, which shrank from almost four million acres in 1882 to about 360,000 acres in 1909.

Settlers
The settlement of Duchesne County is unique in Utah history. Unlike much of the state, Brigham Young did not send settlers here. Instead, people came here of their own choice. And they settled the area much later than the rest of the state, beginning in 1905. That is the year the government threw the

Each family obtained 160 acres of land under the federal Homestead Act. In order to get the land, homesteaders had to prove that they intended to farm it. They had to live on the homestead for five years and make improvements to it. After they did this and paid $1.25, the government gave the homesteaders title to the land.

To profit from the land rush, A.M. Murdock, an Indian trader at Whiterocks, set up a trading post at the site that became Duchesne City. With several other men helping, he set up a large circus tent for a general store and trading post. Other settlers soon arrived, pitched tents, and then built homes.

Not very much rain falls in Duchesne County, and farmers needed water. So Reuben S. Collett and William H. Smart, a church and civic leader, formed the Dry Gulch Irrigation Company in 1905. This company helped farmers to get water rights and build dams and irrigation canals.

Other irrigation companies were also organized. Some were successful, but some were not. Homesteaders on Blue Bench, located just north of the town of Duchesne, formed the Blue Bench Irrigation Company. The wealthy Jesse Knight of Provo helped finance the company. The homesteaders made heroic efforts for many years to divert water from the Duchesne River to their farms on Blue Bench. But their efforts ended in failure for the farmers and financial disaster for Knight.

King's Peak, Utah's highest point.

In 1914, the Utah legislature created Duchesne County from part of Wasatch County. County citizens voted to make Duchesne the county capital.

Economy
The county's economy is based primarily on the livestock industry. But in other areas, the county has gone through boom-bust cycles. The first happened when trappers came looking for fur-bearing animals in the 1820s to 1840s. Next, came the discovery of Gilsonite, and then the rush for land in 1905. Later, oil and gas production has fluctuated up and down. Depending on the demand for oil and gas, sometimes many people work in the oil and gas industry. And sometimes very few do.