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 at the Granary Arts gallery in Ephraim, Utah.
Lee Udall Bennion: I've lived longer in Spring City, Utah, which is where I live now, than any other place by a long shot.
People that have asked me, "What's it like, you know, years ago when living in that kind of a rural situation?" and I'd say, well, the common denominator we all have is that we love the place, and we chose to live there. Because if you're a school teacher, a college professor, a lawyer, it doesn't matter what you are, an artist in our case, we would all be financially better off living in a bigger town. But we've all chosen to come and live there because we value that place. And I said, that's our common denominator, and I think that's a great one. And I still do, I still do.
We come there for different reasons, but I think the most important—no one would move there unless they felt a real draw to it, because that's so a part of what it is. It's not a metropolis, it's a country town. You are very tied to the land there and exposed to it, and so I've just never had any serious problems with that. I paint what I feel and what I see and what I love. And so, yeah, it totally does. I don't need to leave my property to paint for the rest of my life, if I that was the case.
Spring City had its own project, and that was the old school. We were very involved in helping that be saved and restored, and it was a 45 or 40 year project. It had gone, I don't know who all had owned it, but the last owners before they bought it for $1 from the school district, I guess is who they bought it from. But the last use before they got, it had been a camper manufacturing plant, Cyan Viking was the name of it. And then it had just been boarded up, and the roof was starting to fail. There was the windows were all broken, it was full of pigeon dung. It was in tough shape. And Craig Paulsen and Melissa, they moved to town a few years before we did. He's a contractor, loves historic buildings. The DUP had bought it for $1 from the school district, and then they started trying to raise money with bake sales and whatnot to restore it. And I mean, we're talking a really long process.
Long story short, eventually the women in the DUP got too old to continue with the project, and a group of us, which Joe and I are part of, started a nonprofit called Friends of Historic Spring City. And through the home tour, the annual Home Tour, which has probably been going about 40 years now, 35, something like that, and a lot of other things that they do now too, finally got it done. I mean, if you were to get the same kind of square footage with, you know, and just put up a metal building, yeah, you could have a lot of fun there. But these were structures that were built by our ancestors, you know, and they are copacetic. They're made of the materials land around them, the limestone, all the brick the Spring City School was built out of, I'm sure didn't come more than 100 miles away. They're locally made, and they're made by our ancestors. One of the rooms in the old school now is a DUP Museum, which is great.
I tell people we're the navel lint of Utah, we the people living here. But we're right in the belly of our state and kind of at a crossroads, geographically speaking or geologically speaking, it's a very interesting place too. For someone like me who wants to be outside 95% of the time, it's a great place to live.
“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.
