Miscellaneous Topics: Utah/LDS/USU Economics Department History/Telluride Association

During my more than 40 years of travel and personal and professional activity, I collected a variety of documents and materials about the LDS Church and labor and economic topics related to Utah; e.g., the history of the Utah Copper industry; a history of the USU Economics Department—which was an effort on my part to update and complete a draft history started in 1995 by Leonard J. Arrington, but never completed prior to his death; and the work of L. L. Nunn, a pioneer developer of electricity in Utah and other Western states. Nunn, a visionary, was interested in combining work and education in new and innovative ways in the early part of the 20th Century through the Telluride Association and Deep Springs College. This section contains materials about Deep Springs and copies of the annual reports published by the Telluride Association that were stored in the attic of the Telluride House in Ithaca, New York.

This section also contains materials about the efforts I and others made to encourage the LDS church to develop educational and economic development programs in several countries, materials about missionary work carried out in Great Britain during the New Era of 1959-1961, plus other materials related to these and other topics.

Below are links to several additional items that are in the Gary B. Hansen Collection (MSS 319) that have been included in this Miscellaneous Section since they are considered of some interest, even though they do not fit into the five topical areas listed above in this website.

Links

  1. “Industry of Destiny: Copper in Utah,” based on my Master's Thesis at Utah State University. It appeared in the Summer 1963 issue of the Utah Historical Quarterly.
  2. The Richest Hole on Earth: A History of the Bingham Copper Mine, 1963. Working with Leonard J. Arrington, we co-authored this research monograph, that was published by Utah State University.
  3. “Wanted: Additional Outlets for Idealism,” an article published in Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought in the Summer 1970 issue, set out some of my idealistic notions of service and “Zion-building,” for young LDS church members. This article helped shape my own efforts to find ways to carry out these activities. A sequel to this article, written to be a chapter for my personal memoir in 2008, was entitled “Seeking and finding outlets for idealism.” It provides a bookend to the “Wanted” article, and explained how I had tried to find outlets for my idealism during the next four decades after the first article was published.
  4. “Seeking and Finding Outlets for Idealism.” (September 2008), 34 pages. Unpublished paper written by me. This is the sequel to the 1970 Dialogue article, after 40 years of experience.
  5. “The History of the Utah State University Economics Department, 1888-2008,” by Gary B. Hansen and Leonard J. Arrington, January 25, 2011.
  6. L.L. Nunn: A Memoir. A book by the founder of the Telluride Association, Deep Springs College, and the entrepreneur who founded several of the early Utah electrical generating businesses at the beginning of the 20th century.
  7. “Booker T. Washington Meets the Mormons.”  This is a copy of a little known account written  by Booker T. Washington  on March 28, 1913, of his visit to Salt Lake City to learn about  “the Mormons.”  It was one of the letters he wrote  while  making a trip through  the Western United States.  Booker T. Washington  wrote about his visits to various locations and sent them as letters  to the Editor of The New York Age, for publication. The letter about his visit to Salt Lake City was published in March-April  1913, more than two years prior to his death on November 14, 1915.
  8. “A Firsthand Account of the New Era in Great Britain: 1958-1961.” Establishing the full church program in Great Britain 121 years after the first LDS missionaries were sent there in 1837 to “save the church.”