Our Spring 2026 issue brings us halfway through Utah Historical Quarterly's Peoples of Utah Revisited volume, part of Utah's celebration of 250 years of the Declaration of Independence. The state's official America250 website proclaims, “The semiquincentennial is a chance for everyone to feel a part of this major milestone in our nation. We can celebrate courage, liberty, and sacrifice, while also reckoning with difficult truths. By fostering a sense of belonging and coming together with our local communities, we can ensure that Utahns of all ages and backgrounds see themselves in American history.”1 We hope this issue provides one venue for various folks to see themselves in American and Utah history.First, Julia Huddleston lays out the history of homelessness in Utah from 1852 to 1968. For more than a century, Utah's leaders tried to solve homelessness in a variety of ways, including poor farms, “outdoor relief,” and municipal lodging houses. Some of these efforts were official city or county initiatives, while others were run by private charities, such as the Salvation Army. Unfortunately, Utah (as well as most other places) has not solved the problem even today, “but,” Huddleston concludes, “Utah's early responses to homelessness demonstrate a willingness to tackle complex issues head-on.”Next, representatives from the Al Mustafa Foundation of Utah provide a much-needed history of Muslims in the state, who have lived here since at least the early twentieth century. The authors use oral histories in the foundation's collection, as well as other sources, to show how Muslims left their homelands and relocated to Utah, sometimes permanently. In the twenty-first century, Utah has already welcomed thousands of refugees from Muslim countries, who have established mosques and community organizations. “Muslims have demonstrated a constant desire and sustained efforts to engage with Utahn society and contribute to its social, economic, cultural, and political life,” the authors state.Eliza McKinney adds to Utah's LGBTQ+ history with her article on lesbian “separatism,” a political strategy that allowed lesbians to form community outside of male-dominated spaces. During the 1970s and ’80s, queer women established organizations such as Women Aware and opened bookstores and bars. However, “separatism” did not mean isolation; on the contrary, these women championed causes dear to their hearts, such as strengthening their solidarity with gay men during the AIDS crisis of the 1980s. McKinney demonstrates how these women saw “the possibilities of joy and belonging that lesbian community could bring.”Rather than tell a narrative story, Ed A. Muñoz and Marylinda Gonzalez describe the nuts and bolts of conducting sociohistorical scholarship. In 2006, Muñoz debuted a traveling exhibit in Wyoming entitled “Construyendo Latinidad,” or “Constructing Latinx Identity.” Beginning in 2020, he gave the “Construyendo Latinidad” moniker to an oral history project at the University of Utah, collecting the stories of Latine individuals in Utah, in partnership with the Peoples of Utah Revisited. The details of these initiatives may inspire public historians who want to work on similar endeavors.History reminds us that racial and ethnic groups have faced significant prejudice. But even in the midst of widespread xenophobia, some individuals have found acceptance. Lisa Migliori tells the story of Wong Sing, a Chinese man who moved to Fort Duchesne in 1889, the same decade that the United States passed the Chinese Exclusion Act. Wong Sing began a laundry business and later a store, gaining the respect of the local community, despite the national sentiment that looked down on Asians.Of course, every community has its own recipes. In “The Women Who Fed Me,” Isabel Robb reminisces about the foodways of her small hometown of Warren, Utah. Many of its recipes appeared in cookbooks compiled by women in the local Latter-day Saint Relief Society. Robb analyzes how such publications reflected traditional gender roles and how those roles evolved over time (consider the recipe for “working mom's spaghetti”); she concludes with a call to preserve women's history by preserving women's recipes and traditions.Much of this issue's content takes place in the late twentieth and twenty-first centuries, so many of the individuals are still alive. The Peoples of Utah are not just the “pioneering” kind from a distant past. They are the people who make their home in the state today—your neighbors, colleagues, students, and family.
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