Dept. of Transportation Photograph Index Online

The Community Relations Office of the Department of Transportation created an index to their official photographs. The office assigned a job number to each set of photographs taken or adopted by the office as official photographs. The job number provides access to all photographic material in the official photographs collection. Job numbers include a three-part number series. For each job number the index minimally identifies the subject of the photos and the date or dates on which they were taken.

• Department of Transportation Official Photograph Index, 1965-1998

The photographs that indexed here number in the hundreds of thousands–a true treasure unexpectedly found within government records. Find an interesting job in the index? Visit the Research Center to access the photographs from some of these series:

• Official Photographs, 1964-1998 (Series 24289)
• Official photographs: Thistle disaster documentation, 1983-1984.
• Subject Photographs, 1957-1970, 1979.

Newly Processed: November and December 2011

All public records at the Utah State Archives are accessible through the Research Center. However, once processed the records are easier to use with proper storage and fuller descriptions, including online series inventories. The following list includes record series that were processed during the months of November and December 2011:

Attorney General’s Office

• Colorado River Commission case files, 1925-1963

Battleship Utah Silver Service Committee

• Report to the Governor, 1911

District Court (Sixth District : Kane County)

• Probate registers of actions, 1896-1988

District Court (Eighth District : Uintah County)

• Probate index, 1888-1990

Salt Lake City (Utah). Justice’s Court

• Minute books, 1864-1890

Salt Lake City School District (Utah)

• Photographs, 1900-1930

Summit County (Utah). County Coroner

• Reports, 1913-1920

Water and Power Board

• Minutes, 1958-1967
• Administrative records, 1947-1956
• Correspondence, 1954-1955

Browse Death Certificates Online, 1961

Although fully searchable name indexes are not yet available for all the latest death certificates, we are now able to offer digital images online that may be browsed by date and county, similar to the process when visiting the Research Center.

• 1961

Narrow results by choosing both year and county. Within a folder, certificates are chronological by date.

Links will also be added to the series inventory. Death certificates become public 50 years after the date of the death. With key partnerships with the Office of Vital Records and FamilySearch, the Utah State Archives is actively working to toward a goal of yearly updates for online access, with name indexes added as soon as they are completed.

Holiday Closures

The Research Center for the Utah State Archives and Utah State History will be closed Monday, December 26, 2011 for Christmas. It will open again Tuesday, December 27, 2011 at 9 a.m.

We will also be closed Monday, January 2, 2012 for New Year’s Day, opening again Tuesday, January 3, 2012.

Happy Holidays!

Holiday Closure

The Research Center for the Utah State Archives and Utah State History will be closed Thursday, November 24, 2011 for Thanksgiving Day. It will re-open Friday, November 25 at 9 a.m.

Holiday Closure

John Walter Holbrook

The Research Center for the Utah State Archives and Utah State History will be closed Friday, November 11, 2011 for Veterans’ Day. Normal hours will resume Monday, November 14 at 9:00 a.m.

Are you looking for military records? We have research guides online to help you:

• Utah Military Records Collection
• Service Records
• Discharges and Benefit Records
• Wars and Conflicts

Newly Processed: October 2011

All public records at the Utah State Archives are accessible through the Research Center. However, once processed the records are easier to use with proper storage and fuller descriptions, including online series inventories. The following list includes record series that were processed during the month of October 2011:

Department of Natural Resources. Division of Parks and Recreation

• Administrative records, 1948-1979

Historians Seeking Utah Law Enforcement Memorabilia

Mugshot books

Thank you to the Salt Lake Tribune for covering the final Archives Month presentation featuring Robert Kirby.

By Janelle Stecklein

The Salt Lake Tribune

State historians on Friday launched an effort to collect law enforcement memorabilia Utahns might have stored away.

“It’s important to save our law enforcement history because it’s something being lost every second,” said Melissa Coy Ferguson, the manuscripts curator with the Utah State Historical Society.

She said many law enforcement journals, booking documents or other old items of interest are often tossed because people or agencies don’t know what else to do with them. Some are tucked away in attics or garages.

“A lot of times families don’t understand what they have,” Ferguson said.

Read more at Historians seeking Utah law enforcement memorabilia | The Salt Lake Tribune.

Archives Month: Author of The Mormon Rebellion: America’s First Civil War

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Join us on October 21st at the Utah State Archives as Will Bagley discusses his latest book (co-authored with David Bigler), The Mormon Rebellion: America’s First Civil War, 1857-1858. This story describes how in 1857 President James Buchanan ordered U.S. troops to Utah to replace Brigham Young as governor and restore order in what the federal government viewed as a territory in rebellion. In this compelling narrative, Bigler and Bagley use long-suppressed sources to show that contrary to common perception the Mormon rebellion was not the result of Buchanan s blunder, nor was it a David-and-Goliath tale in which an abused religious minority heroically defied the imperial ambitions of an unjust and tyrannical government. They argue that Mormon leaders had their own far-reaching ambitions and fully intended to establish an independent nation the Kingdom of God in the West.

Long overshadowed by the Civil War, the tragic story of this conflict involved a tense and protracted clash pitting Brigham Young’s Nauvoo Legion against Colonel Albert Sidney Johnston and the U.S. Army’s Utah Expedition. In the end, the conflict between the two armies saw no pitched battles, but Bagley and Bigler argue that Buchanan’s decision to order troops to Utah (his so-called blunder) eventually proved decisive and beneficial for both Mormons and the American republic.

A rich exploration of events and forces that presaged the Civil War, The Mormon Rebellion broadens our understanding of both antebellum America and Utah’s frontier theocracy and offers a challenging reinterpretation of a controversial chapter in Mormon annals.

Will Bagley is a historian specializing in the history of western United States. Bagley has written about the fur trade, overland emigration, American Indians, military history, frontier violence, railroads, mining, and Utah and the Mormons, and has authored and edited numerous books, including Blood of the Prophets: Brigham Young and the Mountain Meadows Massacre and So Rugged and Mountainous: Blazing the Trails to Oregon and California, 1812 1848.

Holiday Closure: Columbus Day

The Research Center will be closed Monday, October 10,  2011 in observance of Columbus Day. It will open again Tuesday, October 11, 2011 at 9:00 a.m.