Southern Utah’s unreliable Virgin River prevented settlers from achieving their dream of taming the land to grow cotton.

The Central Utah Project – which is still under construction – began with plenty of optimism and ambition. But politics and the inherent difficulty of moving mountains nearly sank the project.

The vast plumbing infrastructure of the Central Utah Project is the culmination of Utah’s desires to move water to where we want it to be. Find out how complicated and contentious this endeavor has been.

When members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints first arrived in Utah in 1847, they set about changing Utah’s arid environment with irrigation techniques and canals that affect our landscape today.

Utah’s limited water supply needs to be closely monitored! But this is nothing new. In Utah’s settler communities, the local watermaster was a vital figure, although not always the most popular one.

Utah boasts the greatest snow on earth, but the pristine powder isn’t always nature-made. The fake snow saves tourist seasons, but at what cost?

In the late 19th century, Black settlers in the Salt Lake Valley used the waters of Millcreek Canyon to create a thriving community of their own.

The search for more affordable, alternative energy sources is nothing new. Learn how a businessman in the late 1800s electrified rural Utah using a state-of-the-art hydroelectric system.

The colonization of northern Utah’s Cache Valley escalated tensions that led to the horrific 1863 massacre of Shoshone people at their winter camp on Bear River. Learn how the Shoshone have returned to the river and are reclaiming it as a healing ground for the future.

Located along the Utah-Idaho border, the Bear River is the source of life for Northwestern Shoshone people. They know it as Boa Ogoi and for hundreds of years, winters spent along its edge offered respite and rejuvenation.