Estimated read time: 9-10 minutes
There's no doubt that Utah's economy is thriving. With a dynamic blend of technology, tourism, and finance, the state has cultivated an environment that fosters growth and opportunity. In fact, U.S. News and World Report ranked Utah as the best state in its overall rankings, thanks in large part to its No.1 economic standing.
Business-friendly policies, a highly educated workforce, and strategic geographic advantages mean that Utah continues to attract investment and talent. But these new enterprises are a far cry from the Beehive state's hardscrabble pioneer roots.
Here are some (mostly) bygone industries that used to make up a large part of the workforce and economy.
Sugar beets
Sugar House. The Jordan High Beetdiggers. There are references to the sugar beet industry history throughout the state, if you know where to look. Early innovators in Utah had a hand in making the area a powerhouse at the forefront of early sugar manufacturing.
For almost a hundred years, sugar production was an important part of the state's economy. According to the University of Nebraska, Utahns were some of the first to attempt beet sugar production in the United States.
"In the early 1850s, Mormon pioneers began to investigate local sugar beet cultivation and sucrose processing as a home industry to make themselves more independent," Robert M. Harveson writes. "They established a factory near Salt Lake City in 1852 from machinery brought from England and transported to Utah by covered wagon from Kansas."
Unfortunately, this first attempt failed, but it paved the way for a hugely successful industry later on. The site of this first sugar factory attempt gave the Sugar House area its name.
The next advancement came when Arthur Stayner, a horticulturist from England, received a $5,000 bounty from the Utah territorial government for the first 7,000 pounds of marketable sugar he could help produce. According to Leonard J. Arrington for Utah History to Go, this led to the Utah Sugar Company filing for incorporation in 1889, and by 1891, the company built a large sugar beet factory in Lehi.
During its first production season, the factory churned out 12,500 100-pound bags of sugar, all of which was sold locally. Businesses touted sweets made from "Utah sugar."
More factories were built, including the Spanish Fork cutting factory that pumped beet juice to the Lehi factory through a 22-mile-long pipeline—the first of its kind in the country! While the Lehi sugar beet factory was a major success, it ceased production in 1924 and was dismantled in 1939.
Commercial fishing
Utah Lake is one of the remnants of ancient Lake Bonneville, which covered most of prehistoric Utah, according to the Utah Geoglogical Survey. Given this size and scope, it's no wonder that Utah Lake was a source of commercial fishing for many years.
According to a 2014 research paper from BYU graduate Leland Harrison, commercial fishing operations were mostly spearheaded by Scandinavian immigrants. They were employed in commercial fishing in their home countries. Once they came to Utah as converts to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, these men saw the possibilities of commercial fishing operations on the vast Utah Lake.
The fisherman could often net catches of trout, chubs, and suckers weighing more than a ton. "They used techniques they learned in Europe," Harrison writes. "A comparison studied of their techniques in the New World versus the Old World showed that their fishing operations and social customs proved an identical match. Although other groups fished on the lake, the Scandinavian fishermen were the most successful."
The fishermen established a community called Lakeview (west of Provo) during the height of the commercial fishing years. By the mid 1900s, Utah Lake's commercial fishing industry had tapered off as only less appetizing fish like carp and catfish were available and groundwater seepage from Geneva Steel began to pollute the lake.
Today, you can find carp, bluegill, crappie, catfish, walleye, black bass and white bass in the lake, according to the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources. And don't forget the June Sucker — a Utah native fish found nowhere else in the world.
Steel making
During World War II, the United States government needed steel and lots of it.
Utah County was the perfect location to build a steel mill because, according to Utah History Encyclopedia, all the necessary raw materials were located nearby. This included coal deposits in Carbon County, iron ore from Iron County, limestone and dolomite near Payson, and water from Deer Creek Reservoir.
"Other advantages were the proximity of the site to major railroad lines and the availability of an educated and stable local work force," Roger Roper writes for Utah History Encyclopedia. "The plant's inland location, though far from major markets, was selected as a precaution against steel shortages in the West in case of a Pacific coast invasion or closure of the Panama Canal."
Approximately 10,000 workers were involved in the construction of the steel mill, which lasted from 1941 to 1944.
The government ran the steel mill for two years, and during this time employed more than 4,000 workers. Geneva offered high-paying salaries that were hard to come by in those days, leading to a population boom in Utah County.
In 1946, the government sold the plant to United States Steel Division for $47 million, according to Intermountain Histories. Geneva operated successfully for decades while providing thousands of well-paying jobs that helped boost Utah's economy.
By the 1980s and 1990s, the proliferation of cheap foreign steel and increasing regulations stateside brought Geneva's production to a grinding halt. In 2001, the plant's employees were laid off and the company filed for bankruptcy.
Today, the plant has been demolished and the Utah Department of Environmental Quality is continuously working to clean up the site and monitor air quality in the Vineyard area.
Ice harvesting
If you've ever wondered how people kept food cold in the days before refrigerators and electricity, you're not alone. Believe it or not, there was a whole industry in Utah dedicated to the harvesting and preservation of ice through the early 1900s.
Individual families had long harvested ice blocks from ponds, lakes, and caves to preserve their own cold foods throughout the year. But as the farming and grocery industries grew, ice was needed to keep meat and produce cold as it was shipped to other places.
Utah's Farrs Ice Cream even has a history of ice harvesting. Their website states the founder, Asael Farr, used to cut ice from nearby ponds to store in sawdust-insulated ice houses. In fact, before the Farr brothers created the ice cream company, they owned the Farr Ice Company. Their sole purpose was to harvest ice used for shipping fruits and vegetables on the rail lines.
According to UtahRails, the Provo area had two ice houses owned and operated by the railroad. These ice houses employed many workers to harvest the thick ice from Utah Lake each winter, and the ice was then used to preserve railroad cargo year-round.
Around the same time, technological advancements allowed ice storage companies to form that made their own ice rather than harvesting natural ice. Dozens of cold storage companies began to pop up in the 1890s like Mountain Ice & Cold Storage and Salt Lake Ice Company. Of course, this industry fizzled out once the electric refrigerator became common in the 1930s.
Individual mining ventures
While mining is still important to the Utah economy, the days when a miner could venture out into the wild with a pick and a burro and strike it rich are essentially gone.
Mining ghost towns and abandoned mining sites are scattered across the state. Perhaps no industry influenced the growth, economic development, and even the names of Utah places more than mining did. Carbon County, Iron County, Minersville and Silver City are just a few.
Some early pioneers participated in the California gold rush and processed the gold dust in Utah. According to Philip F. Notarianni writing for Utah History to Go, Brigham Young discouraged mining for precious metals until he recognized the need for iron, which was extremely costly to import from the East Coast. Some Church leaders also began to encourage lead and silver mining and even became involved in the ownership of silver mines.
Once railroads were established in Utah in the 1860s, mining boomed. Small local operations became large scale and transported the precious materials for sale. Around this time, prospectors staked claims on gold, silver and other ores in the Bingham Canyon, Tooele and Little Cottonwood Canyon areas. At their peaks, these mining districts were raking in millions of dollars. Utah.gov's History to Go website has more information about the Beehive State's mining history, including historical profit numbers for each mining district.
Of course, the mining history of Utah isn't complete without mentioning Bingham Canyon Mine, also known as Kennecott Copper Mine. According to Mining Technology, it is "one of the world's biggest man-made excavations and among the deepest open-pit copper mines."
Miners have been extracting ore (mostly copper) from the area since 1863. The massive operation has continued to grow and expand over the last 150 years and is currently owned by the Rio Tinto Group, an international corporation.
While the wild west mining towns of old are no more, Utah is still an important producer of metals and minerals.
The U.S. Geological Survey says that Utah is the only producer of Beryllium, and a major producer of bentonite, copper, gold, and vanadium. Utah also produces smaller amounts of other commodities like iron ore, phosphate, and silver.
According to Amy Joi O'Donoghue for the Deseret News, mining may not be the top industry anymore but is still a key player. She writes that as recently as 2022, the energy and mining industries contributed more than 10% of Utah's state GDP and supported about 6% of total jobs in the state.
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