The day that Utah became the 45th state in January 1896, Heber residents raised a huge flag over what’s now City Hall.
On July 24, as local Judy Milliner sang the national anthem, their descendants honored the 45-star flag again at the Daughters of the Utah Pioneers museum on Main Street.
“This is the beauty right here,” museum director Launa Neilsen said. “If she could just talk to us!”
She said the flag was a labor of love, woven using wool from Heber Valley sheep.
“Surviving records indicate the banner was completed late in 1895, its stripes woven from Heber-sourced wool bunting and its cotton stars hand-appliquéd by seamstresses who, according to one anecdote preserved in a family letter, worked by lamplight so that the flag might be ready for the great day,” she said.
Nielsen said in the mid-20th century, someone used satin to patch the flag where its stars were fraying.
When the Daughters found it stashed in a bag, it needed more specialized care.
They brought in a flag expert who helped research its history and showed the group how to stabilize the flag against a fabric backing.
Chapter president Di Ann Duke Turner said the flag has been stabilized in its current condition, not repaired, because the frays and holes tell its story.
It will be framed and displayed in the museum.
“It’s 250 years from when we became a country, 125 years since the Daughters of the Utah Pioneers was organized and 100 years since the Wasatch County Daughters of the Utah Pioneers have been in existence,” she said. “All those celebrations, we didn’t want them to go without us getting this flag done.”
Alice Hicken opened her home to the women to work on the flag, which is 11 feet wide and 6 feet tall. It took the group about a month to gently baste it to its new fabric background.
Turner said when Utahns learned they had achieved statehood, people all over the state celebrated with parades, 21-gun salutes, church bells and parties.
“In Corinne, they had just bought a new gong for their bell, and the kid ringing it so much broke the gong, and it cost $200 – so they weren’t pleased with him,” she said. “Coalville and Brigham City had 45 women dressed as each state of the Union and marched in the parade.”
Kamas had a baseball game in the snow, and Park City had an impromptu parade.
As for the Heber Valley’s flag, it was well loved and flew at many parades, Pioneer Day celebrations and city events in the early years of statehood.
