The Utah Division of State History invites the public, scholars, students, policymakers, Indian tribes, and organizations to submit proposals for papers, sessions, panels, roundtables, or multimedia presentations exploring the theme Rural Utah and Western Issues. Sessions for the 64th annual Utah State History conference will be held on September 30, 2016.

Although Utah and the American West are highly urbanized—principally a product of arid geography—some of their defining characteristics are open spaces and sparse populations. Outside of its urban corridors, the West is a region of small towns and scattered homes amid a big landscape. Its history is a mosaic of agriculture, ranching, manufacturing, community life, and culture. Unfortunately, it is also sometimes ignored in the wider histories.

One of the biggest and most recognizable of western landscapes is Utah’s—the expansive range of the Great Basin, the peaks of the Central Rockies, and the canyons of the Colorado Plateau. Approximately 97 percent of Utah’s land area is considered rural. But this is not an unpeopled and unstoried landscape. About one in ten Utahns lives in towns of 2,500 people or less.

Rural Utahns have grappled with economic development, the dynamics of in-migration, rural gentrification, and the retention of rural culture and identity. Land and resource issues—federal ownership of vast tracts of locally used land, scarcity of water, and energy development among them—are also common, as they are in the histories of other western states. This conference seeks to examine the historical dimensions of these issues, highlighting new, revised, or heretofore unknown histories of rural and western life for a twenty-first century public.

The 2016 Program Committee invites proposals that explore the issues and histories confronting rural Utah and the broader American West. Submissions on other aspects of Utah history will also be considered. We welcome a range of formats, from the traditional panels and sessions to more innovative formats. We encourage full session or panel submissions, though we will make every effort to match single paper proposals with other panels and papers.

Website address for submissions: https://heritage.utah.gov/history/2016-conference

Proposals can be submitted February 1 to April 25, 2016