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VineyardHistory

Every moment, in order

Timeline

From the lake left behind by the ice age to the city of today.

The Ancient LakeEra I
8,000 years ago
Utah Lake takes shape as a remnant of ancient Lake Bonneville, about 8,000 years ago.
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The Friars and the ValleyEra II
1776July 29
Fathers Domínguez and Escalante and eight companions ride north out of Santa Fe.
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1776September 23
The friars come out of Spanish Fork Canyon and see Utah Lake, the home of the Timpanogos Utes.
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1777October 26
Mapmaker Bernardo de Miera y Pacheco asks the King of Spain for a fort and a mission in Utah Valley. Neither is ever built.
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1778
Bernardo de Miera y Pacheco's map shows the Laguna de los Timpanogos, with villages on its east shore.
1813March 16
Seven New Mexican traders led by Mauricio Arze and Lagos García set out for the lake of the Timpanogos.
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1824
Trapper Étienne Provost reaches the river that will carry his name.
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The PioneersEra III
1847July
The first Latter-day Saint wagon company reaches the Salt Lake Valley.
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1849March 12
Settlers sent by Brigham Young found Fort Utah on the Provo River.
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1850January 31
At a council in Salt Lake City, Fort Utah's leader reports growing tension with the Utes.
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1850February 8
Militia surround Old Elk's camp on the Provo River. Dozens of Timpanogos Utes die in the fighting that follows.
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1855
Pioneers settle Lake View at the mouth of the Provo River, next to Vineyard. Thomas Gammon is among them.
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1855
Grasshoppers darken the sun over the first lake bottom fields and eat most of the crop.
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1860
Shadrach Holdaway homesteads on the east shore and plants grapes. John Gillies plants vines too, and the name Vineyard sticks.
1861
The Uintah Valley is set aside as a reservation. Most Utes of Utah Valley move there in the 1860s.
1861
Floods on the Provo River and Utah Lake push Lake View families to higher ground, in 1861 and 1862.
1873
Lake View residents start a sorghum molasses mill, powered by a waterwheel. It runs until 1887.
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1877July 17
Lake View families start their own Sunday School with Peter Madsen in charge. It soon becomes a ward.
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Dairy CountryEra IV
Early 1880s
Carp are brought to Utah County in the early 1880s and soon fill Utah Lake.
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1883
Vineyard's first school, the Little Blue Schoolhouse, is built by Niels Larsen.
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1888March
Captain John Dallin buys lakeshore land and opens the Geneva resort, named for his daughter.
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1890
The first milk receiving station opens beside the Denver and Rio Grande tracks.
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1894
A red brick schoolhouse replaces the Little Blue Schoolhouse.
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1899
The Vineyard Ward is organized.
1901April
Work begins on the Lake View sugar beet slicer, which pumps beet juice by pipeline to Lehi.
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1906
The Andreasens open a general store that sells everything from ribbons to coal.
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1911
The milk station is modernized with scales and an ice cooled aerator.
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1912
Vineyard builds a two story, six room school with indoor toilets.
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1914
The Orem Line interurban begins carrying passengers from Payson to Salt Lake City.
1919
Electricity reaches Vineyard, brought in to power the sugar beet dump.
1920
About 560 people live in the Vineyard area, most of them on farms.
1920
The Bunker family arrives and builds a feed mill.
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1921
Hyrum Larsen opens the Vineyard Mercantile, the Merc.
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1922
Eight year old Rex Blake milks the family cows by hand before school.
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1923
Frank Eastmond and Walter Taylor take over the Geneva resort and ban alcohol and smoking.
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1924
The Pleasant Grove Canning Company takes tomatoes from Vineyard and Lake View farms.
1929
The concrete Geneva Road finally reaches Pleasant Grove.
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1934
The Lake View beet slicer closes and its leaky pipeline is abandoned.
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About 1935
The Geneva resort closes, around 1935. Its buildings come down around 1939.
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1937
Principal Earl A. Beck starts the Vineyard school band.
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1939
Vineyard and Lake View children are combined in one school, renamed Union School.
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Geneva Steel and the WarEra V
1941November
One month before Pearl Harbor, the government approves a steel mill on Vineyard farmland.
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1941November
Deer Creek Dam is finished, steadying Vineyard's late summer water.
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1941December 4
The Vineyard ward Sunday School sends books to its young men in the army and navy.
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1942March
By March 1942 the government has bought the farms for the mill.
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1942March 15
The official purchase date for the forty Vineyard farms taken for the steel plant.
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1942April 4
The deadline for Vineyard families to clear their farms for the steel plant.
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1942April 16
American Fork asks the county to widen the road north from Geneva for the mill's traffic.
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1943December 7
Geneva's coke plant is completed, two years to the day after Pearl Harbor.
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1944February 3
Geneva Steel makes its first steel.
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1944April
The first order of steel plate, 600 tons, ships to California shipyards building Liberty ships.
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1944April 14
The Vineyard Ward holds a service honoring its members in uniform.
1944October 26
A recruiter at the Provo employment office signs up farmers to work at the mill.
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1944December
Construction of the mill is complete, three years after it began.
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1945
Alton and Alta Morrill start a turkey ranch with a thousand poults.
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1945February 25
Three American airmen held in a German prison camp write to Geneva asking for jobs.
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1945August 21
Utah County leaders meet to keep the mill from closing after the war.
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Steel CountryEra VI
1946June
The government sells the mill to U.S. Steel for $47.5 million.
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1946December 26
The paper reports carols playing from the mill's Number 2 gate, enjoyed by Vineyard ward.
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1947October
A young Vineyard man starts work on Geneva's open hearth furnaces.
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1960
Geneva employs 30 percent of Utah County's workers. It nears 8,000 workers in the early 1960s.
1963
Geneva administrator Richard Stone organizes support for the United Fund, now the United Way of Utah County.
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1965
The Vineyard school closes after more than eighty years.
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1967
Raw sewage is no longer dumped directly into Utah Lake once every major valley city has a treatment plant.
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1972
Vineyard leaders first propose incorporating as a town. The idea is turned down.
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1986
USX shuts Geneva down during a thirteen month strike.
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1987August 31
At midnight, the Cannons reopen the mill as Geneva Steel Company. About 1,100 jobs are saved.
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A Town of 151Era VII
1989April 24
Forty Vineyard residents attend the county hearing on their petition to become a town.
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1989April 25
The Daily Herald headline: Newest town has only 148 people, but one big asset.
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1989May
Eleven days after incorporation, the town gathers for a Vineyard Town Family Social.
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1989May
A BYU study shows children's hospital admissions for asthma and bronchitis roughly doubled when Geneva was running.
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1989May 9
The Utah County Commission approves Vineyard's incorporation.
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1989May 11
Vineyard becomes a town. Dairyman Rulon Gammon is its first mayor.
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1990
The census counts 151 people in Vineyard. About three in four are related.
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1991
The Wall Street Journal calls Geneva a "miracle mill." Two modern furnaces cut a batch from 5.5 hours to 45 minutes.
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1991February
Vineyard receives its first property tax check, about $129,000.
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1991September
Geneva finishes its $70 million Q-BOP furnaces, cutting nitrogen oxide emissions by 95 percent.
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1991December 2
The Salt Lake Tribune calls Vineyard the best kept secret in Utah.
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1992August 8
Vineyard dedicates its seven acre town park, paid for in cash.
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1996August
The Vineyard Town Youth Council is organized.
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1999
Vineyard celebrates a century since its ward was organized, with a historical quilt and a time capsule.
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1999February 1
Geneva Steel files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
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2001November
Most of Geneva's roughly 1,200 workers are laid off.
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2002
A second bankruptcy. Steelmaking at Geneva ends.
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2004February 4
A judge approves the sale of the mill's core equipment to Qingdao Iron and Steel of China for $40 million.
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2004August
Mayor Rulon Gammon announces the sale of his 94 acre dairy farm.
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2005
The stacks, stoves and blast furnaces come down at daybreak. Former workers gather to watch.
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2005April
Construction begins on the Lake Side Power Plant, partly on the old mill site. It is finished in 2007.
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2005November
Anderson Geneva buys 1,750 acres of the Geneva site for $46.8 million.
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2010
The census counts 139 people in Vineyard.
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2011
Utah Valley University begins buying land in Vineyard.
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A City on the LakeEra VIII
2014
UVU buys 125 acres of the Geneva site for a West Campus.
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2015
Vineyard grows 417 percent from 2014 to 2015, faster than any city in America.
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2015March 13
The Megaplex at Geneva opens on the old mill site with Utah County's first IMAX screen.
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2016
Vineyard passes 1,000 residents and becomes a city.
2016July
The largest documented algal bloom in Utah history closes Utah Lake.
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2020
The census counts 12,543 people. No city in Utah grew faster that decade.
2020March
Work begins on the Provo River Delta, a 260 acre restoration for the June sucker.
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2021January 4
The June sucker, found only in Utah Lake, is moved from endangered to threatened.
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2022August 12
The Vineyard FrontRunner station opens at 130 E. Market Street.
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2024October 25
Leaders celebrate the opening of the restored Provo River Delta.
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2026
About 20,000 people call Vineyard home. 250 years after the friars, the story is still being written.