Basic Information
- Type of Place
- Other
- Metro Area
- Politics c. 1860?
- Don’t Know
- Unions, Organized Labor?
- Don’t Know
Sundown Town Status
- Sundown Town in the Past?
- Was there an ordinance?
- Sign?
- Year of Greatest Interest
- Still Sundown?
Census Information
| Total | White | Black | Asian | Native | Hispanic | Other | BHshld | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1860 | ||||||||
| 1870 | ||||||||
| 1880 | ||||||||
| 1890 | ||||||||
| 1900 | ||||||||
| 1910 | ||||||||
| 1920 | ||||||||
| 1930 | ||||||||
| 1940 | ||||||||
| 1950 | ||||||||
| 1960 | ||||||||
| 1970 | ||||||||
| 1980 | ||||||||
| 1990 | ||||||||
| 2000 | ||||||||
| 2010 | ||||||||
| 2020 |
Method of Exclusion
Main Ethnic Group(s)
Group(s) Excluded
- Black
- Asian
Comments
For some reason, Utah shows population figures for 1880 and 1870; I guess it had counties even while a territory.
Only 588 blacks in Utah in 1890; 1108 in 1930. Retraction to Salt Lake: 240 in 1890, 740 in 1930. Weber County (Ogden) also grew: showed 87 in 1890, 233 in 1930. Rest of state is constant or shrank. Suspicious shrinkers:
Uintah County
Uintah County showed 127 in 1890 (up from 1 in 1880 %u2014 perhaps Buffalo Soldiers?)
1920: 3 bl. male, 1 female.
Buffalo soldiers came 9/1892-3/1901, acc. to one source.
By 1930, just 4 bl. Meanwhile, white population quadruples.
From Doris K. Burton, A History of Uintah County (SLC: Utah State Historical Scoeiety, 1996) “When the Carbonate Mining District was organized, its constitution declared, ‘No Chinaman would be tolerated in that district.'” (p. 134, 136) That was 6/4/1880, near Bullion Townsite in Uintah County.
Tooele County
Tooele County showed 58 in 1890 (up from 5 in 1880 %u2014 perhaps Buffalo Soldiers?); by 1930, just 3. Meanwhile, white population nearly triples.
Not shaded: the entire state would be shaded, except for six counties!
Clear Creek
Chinese driven out, c.1885.
Larry R. Gerlach notes in his work Blazing Crosse in Zion: The Ku Klux Klan in Utah (Logan: Utah State UP, 1982), that the KKK recruited especially among Masons. (p. 39)
“From its inception, the World Federation of Miners’ socialist politics coexisted with a commitment to excluding nonwhite workers.%u201D According to Guntherr Peck, “Padrones and Protest: ‘Old’ Radicals and ‘New’ Immigrants in Bingham, Utah, 1905-1912,” in John S. McCormick and John R. Sillito, A World We Thought We Knew (Salt Lake City: U. of UT P, 1995), 171-72.
From Richard Ulibarri, “Utah’s Ethnic Minorities,” in Stanford Layton, ed., Being Different: Stories of Utah’s Minorities (Salt Lake City: Signature, 2001):
UT Territorial Legislature passed an act in 1851 to protect slavery (UIibarri 5).
From Ronald G. Coleman, “Blacks in Utah History,” in Helen Z. Papanikolas, The Peoples of Utah (SLC: Utah State Historical Society, 1981), :
“Since the turn of the century a majority of Utah Blacks have lived in the cities of Salt Lake City and Ogden. Employment opportunities for Blacks have been greater… Despite the tendency of Blacks to settle in urban centers, wherever employment opportunities existed in other parts of the state, Black workers willingly moved there. In the period between 1920 and 1930, Carbon and Emery counties had a number of Blacks working in the coal mines and other related industrial activities. The Black population in these areas declined when employment was reduced. For many years the majority of Blacks residing in SL and Weber counties were primarily employed in domestic and personal services for the civilian population.” Also railroads. (Coleman 132)
“Blacks in Utah … were excluded from participating in the general social and cultural life and consequently developed their own churches, fraternal organizations, a literary club, a press, and a community center.” (Coleman 133) They played on industries’ semi-pro baseball teams in the 1920s, such as on the Denver and Rio Grande Western Rail Road team. “”He was a fine player and a gentleman. When we went out of town, he didn’t come with us.”” %u2014 nowhere to eat or stay. (Coleman 134) Utah also had an Anti-Miscegenation Law, 1898-1963. (Coleman 136)
“In 1869 a Black was shot and hanged at Uintah in Weber County. The reason given was ‘he is a damned Nigger.’ In 1925 Robert Marshall was taken from his jail cell in Price by a mob and hanged ‘in slow stages.’ The rope was pulled until he lost consciousness; he was then revived by burning his bare soles with matches. The pulling and burning continued until Marshall died to the cheers of men, women, and children who smiled for a photographer while the dead Black swung from the hanging tree in the background.”
“In 1939 Salt Lake City commissioners received a petition with one thousand signatures asking that Blacks living in Salt Lake be restricted to one residential area. This area would be located away from the City and County building where visitors to the city would not come in contact with a sizeable number of Blacks. The petition was initiated by Sheldon Brewster, a realtor and bishop of a Mormon ward…. Blacks rose up in indignation and marched to protest Brewster’s action. When the petition failed to get the approval of the commissioners, a restrictive covenant policy was used to limit Black opportunities in housing. Real estate companies inserted a Form 30 clause in real estate contracts. (Coleman 137-138)
From a Utah Librarian:
%u201CBlacks are mentioned in the histories of the mining towns and as proprietors of stagecoach stops, so I know some were here in the 1800s, but I’ve never heard of ordinances forbidding them from living in any communities. We have a quite famous or infamous “Nigger Liza” who lived in Pioche, Nevada, and ran a stagecoach stop in our county. The name shows up on our USGS maps marking “Nigger Liza Canyon” but has recently been made politically correct, so new maps show “Negro Liza Canyon.” I’ve seen this similar name on maps in nearby counties. The railroads likely brought blacks to southern Utah in the early 1900s. The first tracks to go from Salt Lake City to Los Angeles were connected in 1905. However, the train siding towns were quite remote from the cities.%u201D