Bear Lake Class Cohort Grant Research Bibliography: Grant Summary

Grant Research Question:

What historical and cultural resources does USU Special Collections and Archives and
Government Documents contain relevant to the history of use, development, recreation, and
cultural resources at Bear Lake, and how can those resources best be collected and made
available for public and research use for increased public awareness of the lake, and current
and future research related to its management?

Grant Background and Goals:

This project aimed to collect Bear Lake resources already present at USU, make them more
visible, accessible, and organized, and facilitate their use for research, public outreach and
awareness, and longer-term research and lake management. Compiled into an accessible
collection, these resources can inform a variety of research questions concerning Bear Lake.

History 3950: Environmental History examines the evolving relationship between human
societies and the environment over time. In this class cohort grant funded by the State of Utah
through the Janet L. Quinney Institute for Land, Water and Air, students individually
completed a class project focused on finding, organizing, and describing Bear Lake historical
primary resources. This work was done in close consultation with Special Collections and
Archives and Government Documents in Merrill-Cazier Library.

USU Special Collections and Archives contains a vast collection of materials relevant to the
history and environment of Utah and the Intermountain West. This project aimed to leverage
SCA’s rich archival materials on the lake, and also list resources available in Government
Documents relevant to Bear Lake, its development and management, watersheds, agriculture
and irrigation, land use, cultural resources, and a host of other topics relevant to current and
future Bear Lake research. While the result of the grant is a substantial annotated list of
sources, it is by no means comprehensive and could be expanded in the future.

The 2022 Bear Lake Management Plan noted that “very little of the area around Bear Lake
has been surveyed for cultural resources,” and that knowledge of cultural resources at the
lake is currently lacking (p. 139). This bibliography should be a useful resource for
researching the history of human use and development at Bear Lake and its cultural
resources, its history of recreation and tourism, and provide important resources for future
surveys of cultural resources, plans for development, and managing the lake as a natural
resource and unique environmental feature in northern Utah and southern Idaho.