Utah State University DigitalCommons@USU Library Faculty & Staff Publications Libraries 2004 "The Hardest Worked River In the World": The 1962 Bear River Project, Utah an"d Idaho Robert Parson Utah State University Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/lib_pubs Part of the Library and Information Science Commons, and the United States History Commons Recommended Citation "The Hardest Worked River In the World: The 1962 Bear River Project, Utah and Idaho," Utah Historical Quarterly, vol. 72, no. 2, spring, 2004. This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Libraries at DigitalCommons@USU. It has been accepted for inclusion in Library Faculty & Staff Publications by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@USU. For more information, please contact [email protected]. UTAH HISTORICAL QUARTERLY SPRING 2004 • VOLUME 72 • NUMBER 2 UTAH HISTORICAL QUARTERLY (ISSN 0042-143X) EDITORIAL STAFF PHILIP F.NOTARIANNI, Editor ALLAN KENT POWELL, Managing Editor CRAIG FULLER, Associate Editor ADVISORY BOARD OF EDITORS NOEL A. CARMACK, Hyrum, 2006 LEE ANN KREUTZER, Salt Lake City,2006 STANFORD J. LAYTON, Salt Lake City,2006 ROBERT S. MCPHERSON, Blanding, 2004 MIRIAM B. MURPHY, Murray,2006 ANTONETTE CHAMBERS NOBLE, Cora,Wyoming, 2005 JANET BURTON SEEGMILLER, Cedar City,2005 JOHN SILLITO, Ogden, 2004 GARY TOPPING, Salt Lake City,2005 RONALD G.WATT,West Valley City,2004 Utah Historical Quarterly was established in 1928 to publish articles, documents, and reviews contributing to knowledge of Utah history. The Quarterly is published four times a year by the Utah State Historical Society, 300 Rio Grande, Salt Lake City, Utah 84101. Phone (801) 533-3500 for membership and publications information. Members of the Society receive the Quarterly, Utah Preservation, and the quarterly newsletter upon payment of the annual dues: individual, $25; institution, $25; student and senior citizen (age sixty-five or older), $20; sustaining, $35; patron, $50; business, $100. Manuscripts submitted for publication should be double-spaced with endnotes. Authors are encouraged to include a PC diskette with the submission. For additional information on requirements, contact the managing editor. Articles and book reviews represent the views of the authors and are not necessarily those of the Utah State Historical Society. Periodicals postage is paid at Salt Lake City,Utah. POSTMASTER: Send address change to Utah Historical Quarterly, 300 Rio Grande, Salt Lake City,Utah 84101. UTAH HISTORICAL QUARTERLY SPRING 2004 • VOLUME 72 • NUMBER 2 98 IN THIS ISSUE 100 Willem Jacobus DeBry and De Utah Nederlander, 1914–1935 By William Mulder 119 “To The Devil By Any Road They Please:” Cache Valley’s Entrepreneurial Challenge to Cooperation By Robert C. Sidford 136 “The Hardest Worked River In The World:” The 1962 Bear River Project, Utah and Idaho By Robert Parson 156 Frances R. Burke: Toquerville Presbyterian Missionary By Sandra Dawn Brimhall and David A. Hales 167 BOOK REVIEWS Michael J. Gillis and Michael F.Magliari. John Bidwell and California: The Life and Writings of a Pioneer 1841–1900 Reviewed by M. Guy Bishop Dan Flores. The Natural West: Environmental History in the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains Reviewed by Julie Clark Simon Sally Denton. American Massacre,The Tragedy at Mountain Meadows, September 1857 Reviewed by Richard W. Sadler Carlos Arnaldo Schwantes. Going Places: Transportation Redefines the Twentieth-Century West Reviewed by Jay A. Aldous William C. Suran, ed. The Brave Ones: The Journals & Letters of the 1911–1912 Expedition Down the Green River by Ellsworth L. Kolb and Emery C. Kolb, and Brad Dimock, ed. Every Rapid Speaks Plainly: The Salmon, Green, and Colorado River Journals of Buzz Holmstrom including the 1938 accounts of Amos Burg, Philip Lundstrom, and Willis Johnson Reviewed by Gary Topping Daniel Tyler. Silver Fox of the Rockies: Delphus E. Carpenter and Western Water Compacts Reviewed by Stephen C. Sturgeon Armand L. Mauss. All Abraham’s Children: Changing Mormon Conceptions of Race and Lineage Reviewed by Thomas G. Alexander Jon Krakauer. Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith Reviewed by F. Ross Peterson 181 BOOK NOTICES 190 LETTERS © COPYRIGHT 2004 UTAH STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY IN THIS ISSUE SHIPLER COLLECTION, UTAH STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY t the age of twenty-five, the future founding father and second president of the United States, John Adams, wrote in his diary in 1760,“I must judge for myself, but how can I judge? How can any Aman judge unless his mind has been opened and enlarged by read- ing?” Reading continued to be a life-long passion for Adams and his insights about government and the solid leadership he rendered owed much to the history, literature, and essays he read. Contributors to the Utah Historical Quarterly have a well-deserved reputation of providing readers with the sub- stance for enlightenment, appreciation, entertainment, and enrichment. The writers whose articles appear in this issue of the Quarterly are no exception. Our first article considers the life of Willem DeBry and his role in the publication of the Dutch-language newspaper De Utah Nederlander from 1914 to 1935. Like thousands of other immigrants to Utah and the United States during the last decade of the nineteenth century and the first decades of the twentieth century, DeBry embraced America but did not forget his home- land. DeBry sought to keep the ties to the Netherlands strong by preserving the Dutch language among immigrants and their children in Utah and, in a time of still limited communication between Europe and the New World, faithfully reported news from the Netherlands. DeBry and De Utah Nederlander remind us just how important journals and newspapers are in keeping a community or a people connected and just how rich the social and cultural life was among Utah immigrants. Our second article considers the question of economic cooperation and 98 individual enterprise in nineteenth-centu- ry Cache Valley.The idealism of the Mormon cooperative community, articulat- ed so eloquently by Brigham Young and others and pushed so fervently during the United Order move- ment of the late 1860s and the 1870s, sounded throughout Utah’s valleys against SHIPLER COLLECTION, UTAH STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY a distinct counterpoint of individualism, private economic opportunity, and need. In the turmoil created by the completion of the transcontinental railroad, the emerging mining industry in Utah and surrounding states, the anti-polygamy crusade, and the just-out-of-reach goal of statehood, it is not surprising that the economic alternative offered through the cooperative movement did not receive unchallenged acceptance. Another challenge to cooperation came a century later as Utah and Idaho encountered the question of the most judicious use of the waters from the Bear River. This most unusual river springs from the north slope of Utah’s Uinta Mountains, flows north into Wyoming and around the northern shore of Bear Lake before turning south to reenter Utah and discharge its waters into the Great Salt Lake.The course of the river runs over five hundred miles, yet its point of origin is only ninety miles east of the Great Salt Lake. As our third article demonstrates, the designation as “the Hardest Worked River in the World,” is one that is well-deserved given the vital role the Bear River has served in the agricultural and economic life of southern Idaho and northern Utah. Frances Burke, the subject of our last article, served as a Presbyterian missionary in the predominantly Mormon community of Toquerville for more than four decades from 1881 until 1925 when poor physical health ended her ministry. A fearless woman of commitment, idealism, and persistence, Miss Burke entered a hostile environment that a person of less fortitude could not have endured. Yet she ended her days honored and remembered by the community for her selfless service and devotion. OPPOSITE: View of Bear River Canyon (Gorge), Box Elder and Cache County line, 1913. ABOVE: Bear River Duck Club, Box Elder County, 1906. Later the Duck Club became part of Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge. ON THE COVER: The United Order Manufacturing and Building Company (right) of the 1870s com- peted directly with privately owned mercantile outfits, similar to the Logan “co-op” of the late- 1860s. Credit: Utah State University Special Collections 99 Willem Jacobus DeBry and De Utah Nederlander, 1914–1935 By WILLIAM MULDER CHURCH OF JESUS CHRIST OF LATTER-DAY SAINTS ARCHIVES ore than fifty years ago it was my good fortune to meet Willem Jacobus (James) DeBry shortly before his death at eighty-one, who told me his story of the founding of De Utah Nederlander, Ma Dutch weekly published in Salt Lake City which he edited for a daunting twenty-one years, from 1914 to 1935.A complete run of the newspaper itself is accessible on microfilm, an eloquent record of Dutch immigrant culture in Utah, but DeBry’s personal account, rich in human interest, would have been lost to history.1 Born in Rotterdam in 1869, converted to Mormonism in 1890, the year he and his wife Elizabeth Hendrika Stokvisch emigrated to America, the courtly DeBry was a literalist, schooled in his youth in the exegesis of a Calvinist creed when he had thought to become a dominee or minister.2 He did not like the designation “Dutch.” He felt Page one of the first issue of De it to be, among Americans, a term of deri- sion. Dutch cleanser, Dutch rusk, Dutch Boy Utah Nederlander, April 2, 1914. De White Lead, even Dutch cheese and Dutch Utah Nederlander was published in tulips were questionable varieties of fame. He Salt Lake City from April 1914 to also objected to the term “Hollander” as October 1935. Dr. Mulder is Professor Emeritus of English, University of Utah and a Utah State Historical Society Fellow.