Springville (Utah)

Utah County

49-72280

Springville is a city in Utah County in the U.S. state of Utah with nearly 30,000 inhabitants in 2009. It is located in Utah Valley in the shore area between Utah Lake and the Wasatch Mountains, where mainly the slope is built under the mountains and the shore near the shares the urban area are still used predominantly agricultural. The place closes south of Provo, the largest city in Utah Valley and the county seat of Utah County.

The city calls itself the Art City Utah, because it maintains the oldest art museum in Utah and is proud of its cultural scene.

History

Springville is one of the original settlements that were created in 1850 by Mormon pioneers on behalf of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints ( Mormons) in Utah Valley, to expand the settlement of the church members from the north adjacent Salt Lake Valley.

Originally the whole region home range of the eponymous Ute Indians. The first white men on Utah Lake were the members of the Dominguez -Escalante expedition of two Spanish Franciscan Fathers 1776. In the 1820s, trappers and traders arrived in the area and talking as the first white longer on site.

The first settlers called their place and the coming out of the mountains Bach Hobble Creek because they had only hobbeln loose their horses by the river, and no pens built. Only three years after the first settlement, the settlement was entered as a city incorporated in 1853 and thus independent city. The name was changed to the consequence in today's Springville, according to many sources slope. However, Hobble Creek was the name of the creek, the canyon, where the river emerges from the mountains, and today also the golf course, which was built around the headwaters.

The Little Hobble Creek but did not provide enough water for the planned size of the settlement, only relatively few farms could exist on the good, but too dry soil. Therefore, some residents dodged on ranching and built cattle and sheep on. You used the pasture lands in Hobble Creek Canyon, the vegetation cover was destroyed and exposed the soil to erosion. This was followed by flooding of urban areas below the mountains, which triggered a long-lasting conflict between farmers and ranchers. 1902, the matter from the U.S. Department of Agriculture has been investigated and found the mountains above the town under the administration of the fledgling United States Forest Service.

As a result of the conflict with the ranchers themselves also walked agriculture in the town. The residents of Springville took advantage of new opportunities for promoting irrigation systems by the Federal Government and presented as other settlements in Utah Valley largely on the cultivation of fruit on the one hand and the other hand to sugar beet. For irrigation energy was needed, so in 1904 the first small hydropower plant in Hobble Creek Canyon was built. It has since been expanded several times and now supplies up the city with electricity.

Already in 1856, some of the settlers expanded the agricultural land to the south and cleared the so-called Union Field. Because of sporadic conflicts with the Indians, but it was only used to a greater extent after the Ute had been forced in 1869 to an Indian reservation. The second settlement in the area of Springville grew slowly and was awarded in 1901 in connection with the installation of an irrigation system independence as Mapleton.

Springville today

Since the 1990s, the city of the agricultural community in a suburb of Provo is changing on the eastern shore of Utah Lake Springville part of its agglomeration today. The city would benefit from the settlement activity predominantly below the mountains took place, and therefore are the parts belonging to the municipality of lake level largely as area reserve. Since there running Interstate Highway 15 and the railway line from Salt Lake City to the south, the city is well placed to settle trades.

In 2000, Springville was economically far weaker than the region's average. The median household income was $ 46,472 a year compared to $ 56,752 in Utah Valley. In the decade between 2000 and 2010, the city grew significantly by about half of the previous population and increasingly attracted wealthier residents. 2008, the median household income was already grown to $ 54,155. The percentage of residents with college degree nor in 2000 was at low for Utah 28.5 %, while it had increased to 43.3 % by 2010.

Springville is the seat of the oldest art museum in Utah. As early as 1903 got the tiny high school of local artists donated two paintings in 1907 were added other works of art and the school began collecting donations in order to expand the collection with small purchases can. Since 1921 and to this day throughout there is an annual exhibition of recent works by local and regional artists and 1925 the collection as Springville Museum of Art became legally independent from the school. In the Great Depression and the arts were funded by the New Deal: 1935 began the Works Progress Administration with plans to expand the collection, accompanied by local donations were raised. 1937 the museum moved into its own building in the Spanish colonial style, which has since been expanded several times with the growing collection. The museum displays mainly works by artists from Utah and works that have emerged in Utah. Since 1993, it also builds a collection of Socialist Realism, which came about due to donations of a local collector. This collection is the largest of its kind in the western United States and moved to to the museum at half of its visitors.

The town is west of the settlement and the parallel U.S. Highway 89 opened by the Interstate Highway 15 in the settlement area.