Long reads

Stories

50 stories, in the order they happened. The people, places and turning points that made Vineyard.

Era I · Before 1776

The Ancient Lake

Mammoths on the shore

Dinosaurs, then an inland sea the size of Lake Michigan, with mammoths, musk oxen, camels and ground sloths on its shores. What lived here before anyone wrote it down.

Ice Age to today3 min read

The birds of Utah Lake

Pelicans that fly in from an island in the Great Salt Lake to fish, bald eagles in winter, an island that sank, and the birds that knew the lake when it was an inland sea.

1776 to 20243 min read

The fish of Utah Lake

Giant trout, the carp that replaced them, and the comeback of a fish found nowhere else on Earth.

1776 to today3 min read

The wildlife of Utah Lake

Beavers that drew the fur trappers, muskrats that Vineyard boys trapped for pelts, deer and foxes on the shore, and the midges, mosquitoes and grasshoppers that have shaped life on the lake.

Era II · 1776 to 1846

The Friars and the Valley

17762 min read

The friars at the lake

In 1776, two Spanish priests became the first Europeans known to see Utah Lake.

1776 to 18444 min read

A five foot tall artist and retired militia captain drew the first map of Utah Valley in 1778. His lake, his mountain and one mistaken river shaped how the world pictured this country for the next seventy years.

1776 to 18243 min read

Silvestre, Joaquín and the traders

Two Timpanogos guides led the friars home to Utah Lake in 1776. The friars promised to come back and never did. The Spanish traders who came instead brought horses and goods, and a darker trade.

Era III · 1847 to 1877

The Pioneers

1822 to 19175 min read

Shadrach and Lucinda Holdaway

A Mormon Battalion teamster turned machinist and a pioneer healer built Provo's first carding mill, then a ranch on the lake bottom that their family farmed for generations.

1847 to today2 min read

Faith on the shore

How the Latter-day Saint pioneers and their wards shaped Vineyard's community.

1849 to 18772 min read

The pioneers of the lake

Driven west across a continent, the Latter-day Saints built a fort on the Provo River, then farms at its mouth beside Vineyard.

1849 to 18526 min read

Life inside Fort Utah

Twelve people to a log cabin, suckers for supper and a cannon on a mound: the first years of the fort that became Provo, a few miles down the shore from Vineyard.

18502 min read

The winter of 1850

A killing on the Provo River, and the war that followed between settlers and the Timpanogos Utes.

1853 to 19195 min read

The Danes of Lake View

A Danish soldier turned fisherman, his five wives and thirty five children, and the Scandinavian neighbors who made the river mouth a little Denmark.

1853 to 18555 min read

When Utah Valley forted up

A trade gone wrong in Springville, a guard shot at Payson, and a year when every town in Utah Valley pulled behind walls while the lakeshore below Provo stayed empty.

1855 to 18675 min read

The Indian farm on Spanish Fork

For a dozen years a federal farm on the south end of Utah Lake was meant to be a permanent home for the valley's Utes. Then it was signed away at a council held on its own grounds.

1865 to 18724 min read

Black Hawk's war and Utah Valley

Utah's longest Indian war began in Sanpete, ran its raids down Spanish Fork Canyon, and ended with its leader asking forgiveness and coming home to die at the south end of Utah Valley.

Era IV · 1878 to 1940

Dairy Country

1855 to 19415 min read

Making the lake bottom

Vineyard's fields were swamp, alkali and sagebrush before settlers drained them by hand, one clay tile at a time. Then came sugar beets, a slicer that rivaled the steel mill, and a pipeline of beet juice running to Lehi.

1856 to 20206 min read

The carp fishermen of Utah Lake

Seines, tithing fish, a cannery at Geneva that lost its war and a family still hauling carp from the lake after four generations.

1862 to 19515 min read

The ditches and the decree

Every field between the Provo River and the lake depended on a ditch, a share and a court's ranking of who had come first.

1877 to 20255 min read

The chapels of the lake bottom

A fisherman's front room, a site chosen by counting buggy wheel turns, a chapel sold to a steel mill, and the many stakes that came after.

1883 to 19653 min read

The Vineyard band

Teachers paid in potatoes, a piano bought with a farm auction, a playground built with a school play, and a principal whose marching band played the Days of '47 parade.

1884 to 19476 min read

Steamers and pleasure resorts of Utah Lake

Hot plunges at Saratoga, a mock naval battle at the mouth of the Provo River and a showboat that carried Depression crowds to Bird Island.

18885 min read

The Geneva resort

A dance floor on springs, special trains from across Utah and a toboggan slide into the lake, just up the shore from Vineyard.

1889 to 19525 min read

Sugar beet country

How a church-backed factory at Lehi turned Utah Valley's farms into beet fields, piped juice across the county and then lost its war with worms and blight.

1890 to 19993 min read

The milk train

For half a century Vineyard's milk went to market by rail, cooled with ice cut from Utah Lake. At its peak forty dairies worked the lake bottom. By 1999 two were left.

1894 to 20044 min read

The Vineyard schoolhouse

A $2,000 schoolhouse on the lake road, a band that marched in Salt Lake City and an old building handed to a college.

1906 to 19805 min read

The stores and the Geneva Hotel

Eggs traded for candy, a hotel on the lakeshore with a bear loose in its bedrooms, a feed mill that grew into a poultry business and a turkey ranch that shipped from Ogden to Las Vegas. Vineyard's early businesses.

19222 min read

A Vineyard farm kid, 1922

Milking by hand before school, milk cans on a wagon, a train every day to Salt Lake City, and the thrill of a 1928 Model A.

Era V · 1941 to 1945

Geneva Steel and the War

1941 to 19453 min read

Who built Geneva

Ten thousand workers, three years, two hundred million dollars, and the families who gave the mill their working lives.

1941 to 19463 min read

Vineyard in the war

The war took Vineyard's sons away and put a steel mill in their fields. The local paper followed every step.

1941 to 19465 min read

Thirty days to leave

In March 1942 the government bought forty Vineyard farms for a war plant and gave the families until April 4 to get out. Here is why it chose Vineyard, and what it took.

Era VI · 1946 to 1988

Steel Country

1870 to 20024 min read

Missionaries from the lake bottom

From a Danish fisherman sent back to Denmark to brothers called to Russia, Alabama and Uruguay, a farm ward that kept sending its young people around the world.

1900s to 2020s4 min read

The pollution of Utah Lake and the valley air

How Utah Lake became polluted: raw sewage poured into it until 1967, a steel mill on its shore, winter smog that sent children to the hospital, algae blooms, and the long work of cleaning up the lake and the air around Vineyard.

1923 to 19715 min read

Ironton and the sale of Geneva

Before Geneva there was Ironton, a lone blast furnace south of Provo, and its owners ended up buying the giant war mill on the Vineyard shore for a fraction of its cost.

1944 to 20035 min read

The steelworkers of Geneva

Seizures, national strikes, wildcat walkouts, a six-month lockout and a last shift: six decades of work and bargaining at the mill on the Vineyard shore.

1946 to 19595 min read

Geneva in the Cold War

After the war, the mill on the Vineyard shore rolled plate for oil pipelines in Arabia and Iraq, was seized by a president during the Korean War and made Orem a city.

1946 to 19993 min read

Geneva's second life

U.S. Steel kept Geneva running for forty years, then shut it down in the middle of a thirteen month strike. A group of local investors brought it back, cleaned it up, and kept it alive into a new century.

19473 min read

Inside the open hearth

Three hundred tons of steel at 3,300 degrees, asbestos coats in 160 degree heat, and a roof that could cave in without warning. A Vineyard steelworker remembered the job that paid like no other in the valley.

1983 to 19855 min read

The year the lake broke its compromise

In 1983 and 1984 Utah Lake rose to the highest level ever measured, drowning shoreline fields and forcing a century old water deal to be rewritten.

19873 min read

The miracle mill

U.S. Steel gave up on Geneva. A Utah lawyer, his brother, a senator and the steelworkers' families brought it back at midnight.

Era VII · 1989 to 2012

A Town of 151

1855 to 20042 min read

The Gammons

A pioneer at the river mouth in 1855. A town's first mayor in 1989. One family runs through Vineyard's whole story.

1972 to 19893 min read

The petition of 1989

Vineyard first asked to become a town in 1972 and was turned down. Seventeen years later 148 residents, nearly every adult among them, signed a petition that made the farming community the newest town in Utah.

1986 to 19965 min read

The winter the air cleared

When a strike shut Geneva Steel for a winter, a BYU economist counted sick children in Utah Valley hospitals and changed how the world regulates air pollution.

1989 to 19993 min read

The town that paid cash

Vineyard's first council borrowed $15,000 to get started. Within two years the town had a hall, a seven acre park paid for in cash, lower taxes, and a reputation as the best kept secret in Utah.

19902 min read

A town of 151

In 1990 nearly everyone in Vineyard was family. Twenty-five years later, almost everyone was new.

2001 to 20053 min read

The China sale

How the heart of a Utah steel mill was sold, packed and shipped across the Pacific, and how the rest came down.

2003 to 20145 min read

The power plant at the mill

How a bidding contest at the Utah Public Service Commission put two gas-fired power plants on the ruins of Geneva Steel, and gave a town of a few hundred people something to tax.

2005 to 20265 min read

Digging out Geneva

Slag, concrete, iron dust and tar pits: the long, unglamorous cleanup that turned a dead steel mill into ground people could live on.

Era VIII · 2013 to today

A City on the Lake

2005 to today2 min read

From ruins to a downtown

What rose on the 1,750 acres where Geneva Steel once stood.

2009 to 20265 min read

The long walk to the lake

Vineyard sits on Utah Lake but spent a century fenced off from it. A trail, a beach, a herd of cows and a pile of grant money are slowly opening the shore.