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 Utah State University campus in Monticello, Utah.
Lee Bennett: Well, like most people, I started out as a child and managed to make it into adulthood.
I have a degree in anthropology and specialized in archaeology, and that is actually why I'm here indirectly. The Forest Service in Idaho picked me up as an archaeologist, and after a few years there, I wanted to move into management, which in the Forest Service means a District Ranger. So they transferred me to Monticello.
Because this area has so many archaeological resources, they thought it would be a good fit to have a ranger that knew something about that. So that's why I'm here. I was the first female district ranger in this area, and in the eyes of some people, that meant I denied a man a job that he needed to support his family. And so there was some concern about that.
San Juan County struggled economically for most of its existence. Some would argue it still does. For many, many years for [the] state of Utah, not just for San Juan County, but particularly here, it was livestock and mining that provided the majority of the family-supporting jobs. So those kinds of things are still what people are concerned about losing.
In the old days, museums were buying artifacts. So people could go out as a family activity, and recover artifacts and sell them to a museum and get a little extra spending money. And now, of course, that's not an option anymore, and it's difficult to understand and explain why the difference.
Edge of the Cedars has really helped with that. The two Federal agencies here in town were actively engaged in helping the museum become qualified as a Federal repository, but it became qualified while I was the district ranger. And I brought back some collections from the US Attorney's Office that had been gathered during law enforcement activities. Raids, they're called. I was responsible for bringing some of that back and putting it in the museum where it could be curated, and as the museum sees fit, displayed for the public. And I think that's helped because then people can see the objects and understand more about the stories they tell, and not feel that they're totally outside that realm.
I think the biggest challenge was the differences of opinion about what the land uses should be. Negotiating through that is a challenge, and basically, you'll never make everybody happy. So the buzzphrase when you worked for the government was, if everybody's mad at you, then you're in the right spot.
Most of the people that I dealt with, while they may have had strongly held opinions, and perhaps generations of background in how and why they felt that way, when you talk to them one-on-one they were interested in what the different perspective might be. They might not agree with it, but they were willing to listen to it, and vice versa. And so there's just a lot of good hearted people here who want to do the right thing. The "right thing" is a moving target, which makes it difficult for both agency and archaeologists and public. But I think it's the people. I have met some very fine individuals, people I probably would not share political perspectives with, or maybe even resource perspectives, but people with whom you can discuss the differences, and it doesn't devolve into a fight.
“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.
