Every rural person and place has a story. Change is part of that story.
“Rural Utah at a Crossroads” is part of the Smithsonian traveling exhibit Crossroads: Change in Rural America, which explores the changing meaning of rural life and identity. Utah Humanities is touring Crossroads to eight rural communities across Utah in 2024. As part of the tour, Utah Humanities and Utah Public Radio are partnering with exhibition hosts to interview local residents about change in their communities.
This interview took place in collaboration with the USU Blanding campus.
Lynn Stevens: I was born in Blanding in a two-room house in 1936.
My mother is a schoolteacher. She actually came to Blanding in 1924 in a mail wagon after graduating from Utah State, and so school was really very important.
Blanding was settled by farmers, ranchers who married single schoolteachers who came down here to teach school in San Juan. And so emphasis on education was prominent. Education — I'm very happy to be able to attend or send my kids or my grandkids to schools. We have Utah State University Eastern here, and other emphasis on education, which is probably a plus in time and distance, at least.
Well, when I first went to college, I saw more kids in one day than I'd seen in my whole lifetime together, and I thought, wow, they've all been to big, fancy schools with a lot of academics. But I discovered before the first quarter was over that San Juan school system prepared me as well as they were prepared to go ahead and do well in college.
My estimate, when I was gone for 45 years, I informally figured there was about 5,000 babies born during that time. But the population of Blanding only increased by 2,000 while I was gone. Because, as the others grew up, went to school, went to college, they had to have a job, and there was not that much employment in Blanding. So really, a lot of the quality young people that were born and raised here are working somewhere else, because there's not adequate amount of employment here.
I've lived in 31 different houses in different locations all over America and Europe, and this is still number one. The mission, the functions that I've had, the responsibility for have all been, in my opinion, worthwhile and enjoyable to have responsibilities for. I think one of the things I brought back to the county was having been somewhere else, having served in many different very responsible jobs, and saw what could be done.
I used to go to the US Congress regularly to represent the army on funding and had probably an extraordinary experience of dealing with the federal government. [I] brought that home with me.
When Governor Huntsman was the governor, I was the state director of public lands policy and had the opportunity for about three years to visit every county in the state and on nearly every rural road in the state. And I was profoundly impressed with the need for the state legislature and others to recognize the value of the rural, literally rural, part of the state to the survival of the state as a whole. And I think that's not a waning requirement, that's going to be there as as long as there are people out here. State depends a great deal more on the rural community input than some policymakers realize.
“Rural Utah at a Crossroads” is a collaboration between Utah Public Radio, Utah Humanities, and the community hosts of Crossroads: Change in Rural America, a Smithsonian Museum on Main Street exhibition made possible in the Beehive State by Utah Humanities.
Support for Museum on Main Street has been provided by the United States Congress.
