Benevolent and Mutual Aid Societies, Fraternal Orders, and Labor Unions and Salt Lake City’s West Side

Salt Lake West Side Stories: Post Twentyby Brad Westwood and Cassandra Clark Above image caption: The Salt Lake City office of the Modern Woodmen of America, a workers’ fraternal life insurance organization, was located in 1911 in an upper floor office of the Bamberger Building (163 South Main Street). Photo courtesy of the Utah State Historical Society, Shipler Photographic Collection …

Irish, Cornish, Welsh and Jewish immigrants and Salt Lake City’s West Side

Salt Lake West Side Stories: Post Twenty-TwoBy Brad Westwood Many of the west side’s earliest immigrants found employment in mining, transportation and smelter industries. Others bought and sold goods essential to frontier life. This segment speaks to the Cornish, Irish and Jewish American Communities who lived and worshiped on the west side. Many immigrants left their homelands because of famine …

Brokers of Human Capital

Salt Lake West Side Stories: Post Nineteenby Brad Westwood Many early American immigrants first heard about Utah and the American West from steamship and labor agents whose work was similar to modern-day employment recruiters. The steamship and labor agents attracted laborers by offering to pay for their transportation costs. In return, laborers signed a contract that required that they pay …

Salt Lake as an Early Industrial City and the Beginning of the Relief Society Halls

Salt Lake West Side Stories: Post Tenby Brad Westwood Not long after the members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (hereafter LDS Church, also known as Mormons) entered the Salt Lake Valley, Brigham Young and members of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles instructed Henry G. Sherwood and Orson Pratt, to design an ideal agrarian-based city. Young’s …

Economic Immigrant Communities’ Impact on Salt Lake City

Salt Lake West Side Stories: Post Twenty-OneBy Brad Westwood The arrival of later economic immigrants, from across the United States and around the globe, to Utah and the Pioneer Park neighborhood, created conflicts with the Mormon Church’s (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, also known as Mormons) all-encompassing societal ideal. This post was updated in February 2023. Salt …