State History artifacts get a new home, for now, and you can go see them

The building that houses the Midvale Collections Center for the Utah Division of State History is quiet — as if it’s in awe of what’s inside.

Amid the towering shelves filled with dark gray folders, and gold- and silver-colored boxes, the repository contains many treasures.

A suitcase in the shape of the state of Utah, covered with stickers of different countries. Slot machines, out of use. Burnt pillars from the Governor’s Mansion when a Christmas tree in the residence of Gov. Michael Leavitt caught fire in 1993. High school yearbooks from all over the state — including from Topaz High School, created for Japanese Americans who were kept in an internment camp near Delta from 1942 to 1945.

The building, at 7292 S. State St. in Midvale, is a temporary space, formerly home to the state’s Department of Workforce Services. It’s one of five locations holding the state’s collection of historic artifacts.

On Friday, from 3 to 6 p.m., the building will have a grand re-opening — the first time in two years that the public can see what’s going on with the state’s collection of historical objects. The event is part of Utah History Month, launched by the division in 2019 to promote history work happening in Utah, coinciding with Utah’s statehood day on Jan. 4.

“It took us five weeks to get everything into this building and then we had to get it all organized,” said Doug Misner, the research and collections manager. The location is a “work in progress,” he said, with boxes still to be unpacked in some back hallways.

In that five weeks, staff members have moved somewhere around 8,300 manuscripts, 1 million photographs, 31,000 artifacts and other objects, 1,000 architectural drawing sets, 30,000 books and 25,000 pamphlets, among other reference materials. They moved all those items 11 miles, from where they had stored previously — in the Rio Grande Depot on the west side of downtown Salt Lake City.

The depot, built in 1910, was one of 77 historic buildings in Utah damaged in the 5.7 magnitude earthquake that hit Magna in March 2020. Except for one cover for a sewing machine, Misner said, not much in the collections were damaged.

But, if it weren’t for protective shelving, Misner said, they would’ve lost some significant history. State historians told The Tribune in 2018 that there was $100 million in artifacts in that leaky Rio Grande basement.

The Midvale space, officials said, is temporary. There are hopes that a museum will be completed in the Utah State Capitol in 2026, with specifically designed rooms for collection storage.

Meet the historians

Seven people work at the Midvale collections building, out of some 25 division staffers statewide. On the day The Tribune visited, four of those workers were present.

Misner, the soft-spoken leader of the team, has an answer to any question about the collections. Sabrina Sanders is curious, Chase Roberts is humorous and Greg Walz is quiet and steady.

Sanders and Roberts give a tour of the artifacts area, weaving through aisles, obliging requests to talk about certain items. They pull a few out for closer inspection. On the right sits a collection of typewriters, while a terminal post office window is on the left.

The storage areas are kept at a steady 65 degrees, Sanders said. No fluctuation means fewer chances of anything being damaged, she said.

There’s an accordion camera from Dr. William Henry Hopkins, a dentist and tourism booster, who photographed many famous places, some of whose names — Venice, Rome, Pompeii — are etched into the wood.

“He took pictures of a lot of the places we would [now] associate as national parks,” Roberts said, as he handles the camera with blue latex gloves on.

“We have a lot of working-class history here, and a lot of hobbyists’ history, as well,” Roberts said.

Another photo collection in the division’s possession is the impressive archive of the Shipler family, which Misner called one of the most important collections in Utah.

“It not only documents what’s happening in the state,” Misner said. “It’s the history of photography itself, because as the formats they used to photograph changed, their materials changed.” That includes 10,000 glass plate images, a format popular in the 1850s.

The Shiplers’ archive, Misner said, covers most of the 20th century and captures important state historical information, such as the construction of the Utah State Capitol, which started Dec. 26, 1912; the building was finally dedicated on Oct. 9, 1916.

Changes ahead

All in all, the division has more than 1 million photographic images in its collection, and some 300,000 (indlucing the 10,000 glass plates from the Shiplers’ archive) have been digitized so far, Misner estimated. “So we have quite a bit more work to do,” he said.

Online tools have changed the ability for everyone to access the collections, Misner said.

The state’s collection is constantly growing. Soon, officials said, the area dedicated to textiles will receive a donation from Salt Lake Community College of a fashion collection with around 2,000 objects.

Misner said his team is aware that history often leaves out the underrepresented.

“Because we’ve had very limited storage space, we’ve had to be very selective,” he said. “We didn’t want to bring in something that we couldn’t take care of or we didn’t have space for.”

The division, said deputy director Kevin Fayles, aims to work more with underrepresented communities through a series of pilot projects. One of them, he said, is “The Peoples of Utah Revisited,” which will collect stories and copy photos from Utah’s Indigenous people and immigrant communities.

“We’re very hopeful that we can do more,” Misner said. “We recognize the gaps in our collection. We recognize that we need to reach out to communities to help us understand what are those stories that we can be hoping to share.”

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