Members of this year’s Heber Leadership Academy have taken a deep dive into the city’s history. In a few months, they will share what they’ve found with the community.
Rachel Kahler, a member of this year’s leadership class and the executive director of the Community Alliance for Main Street, said it’s important for Heber to remember its roots during this period of rapid growth. She said data from 2021 showed Wasatch County was one of the fastest-growing counties in the country.
“The problem that we’re having is, we’re growing so fast, we’re losing our roots,” she said. “We’re forgetting who we are, and we’re forgetting little small-town Heber.”
She and her classmates decided to create a historic tour of about three dozen sites around downtown Heber – a way for longtime residents and newcomers alike to learn more about the place they live.
“Heber was founded in 1857 by Mormon pioneers that came across and really were the first settlers in this valley,” she said. “And we have homes that these original settlers built 130 years ago that are still standing on our tour.”
She said the 34 sites on the tour tell a story of resilience and community.
“You can learn about those original settlers and what they had to endure to really make it through those first couple of harsh winters, until they could move from their log cabins – that had snow and wind blowing through – into these red stone homes,” she said.
The oldest surviving homes date back to the 1860s. Kahler said one early settler, Joseph Stacy Murdock, was the first bishop of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the Heber Valley. And he worked with the federal government to establish mail service to the region.
Another site on the tour is the home of the man who founded the Wasatch Wave, the valley’s newspaper still in print today. Kahler told the Heber City Council Feb. 18 the news in the 1880s didn’t sound so different from the debates happening in Heber today.
“The community was really struggling with their growing pains – imagine that in 1889,” she said. “And the Wave was encouraging them to move from a town to a city, and there was a lot of pushback from the community, but because of an editorial in the Wave, they were able to accept that designation and move forward as a city.”
Other historic sites are familiar to the community, but they’ve been given new purposes in the 21st century. A Victorian house from the 1890s, for example, is now home to Encircle Heber, a safe place for LGBTQ+ youth. An early LDS meetinghouse is now the local Catholic parish, St. Lawrence. And a saloon that operated through the Prohibition era is a sports bar today.
Kahler said these spots and more will be part of a self-guided historic tour starting in early summer. Each site will have a plaque with the construction date and the building’s story.
The Heber City Council voted unanimously Feb. 18 to fund the project. Historic plaques should arrive in April, and the leadership academy is planning a ribbon-cutting event in June.
Locals will be able to pick up a map at the Daughters of the Utah Pioneers Museum or the Heber Valley Visitors Center, and members of the Heber Leadership Academy will be stationed around town to talk with people about the city’s history.
More information about the historic sites is available on the Heber City website.
