The Youthful Workforce of the North Rim, Zion, Bryce & Cedar Breaks: "Singaway: Working and Playing for the Utah Parks Company, 1923 to 1972" (Season 2, Ep. 14)

**Brad Westwood** (0:10)
Welcome to the podcast Speak Your Piece. This is a podcast about Utah's history produced by the Utah Department of Heritage and Arts. I'm Brad Westwood, Senior Public Historian. My job is to make the very best, the most interesting, the most accurate history about Utah accessible to the widest audience. If there's one place, one podcast to get your Utah history fix, I hope this is the place.
Today, we will be talking about the Utah Parks Company, a subsidiary of Union Pacific Railroad based out of Cedar City, Utah. This company, for nearly a half a century from 1923 to 1972, hired, and this is an estimate, they don't have an exact number, but they believe they hired altogether 40,000 youth and other employees, ages 16 and older as seasonal employees, including locals from across Utah, as well as urban and rural youth from around the country, including New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, California, Nebraska, and more. All to serve, prepare, and care for tens of thousands of annual tourists or guests, or what the Utah Parks Company employees called the dudes, and that refers to both men and women, who traveled by train and buses and then stayed in the Utah Parks Company lodges and ends at Zion National Park, Bryce Canyon National Park, Cedar Breaks National Monument, and the North Rim of the Grand Canyon.
My guests today are the co-authors of a book on these 40,000 plus employees who worked for the Utah Parks Company for that 50-year period. First is Janet Seegmiller, longtime historian, archivist, and Special Collections Director, who is now retired, and Ryan Paul, who teaches American and Western history, specializing in public history at Southern Utah University in Cedar City. The title of the book we'll be talking about today is SINGAWAY, Working and Playing for the Utah Parks Company, 1923 to 1972 Hello, Janet. Hello, Ryan. Thanks to both of you for joining me today.

**Janet Seegmiller** (2:23)
It's our pleasure. We're happy to be here.

**Ryan Paul** (2:27)
Yes. Thank you for having us.

**Brad Westwood** (2:29)
Janet Burton Seegmiller, retired in 2014 as a faculty librarian and director of special collections in the Gerald R. Sherritt Library at Southern Utah University. Janet spent much of her career identifying, collecting, and making available unique archival and rare historical materials about Southern Utah. She is the co-author of The History of Iron County, published by the Iron County Commission and the Utah State Historical Society as part of the Utah Centennial County History Series. This book was published in 1998 And the second book she authored is Be Kind to the Poor, The Life Story of Robert Taylor Burton, which was published in 1988 Janet, while working as senior missionary with her husband Keith, who sadly is now deceased, they worked together at the LDS Church History Department, and she kindly edited my 2020 serial blog entitled Salt Lake West Side Stories on the largely lost diversity and the social industrial history of the Pioneer Park neighborhood of Salt Lake City.
My second guest and author is Ryan Paul, a university lecturer specializing in public history and the history of national parks in the history department of Southern Utah University. For 19 years prior to his SUU academic appointment, Ryan served as museum curator at the Frontier Homestead State Park, one of Utah's most loved and visited state-owned museums, which tells the story of early settler life and the industrial life of Iron County and Southwest Utah.
This very hands-on-based museum does have a very extensive horse-drawn wagon collection, groups of historic buildings that people can mingle around. They involve Native American heritage and so much more. And although Ryan is no longer associated with the state museum, I want to mention it because it's one of Cedar City and Southern Utah's wonderful attractions. Once more, thank you so much, Ryan and Janet, for being here today.
Let's talk about this main title of your book, Sing Away. What does that mean?

**Janet Seegmiller** (4:48)
As from the very beginning in 1924, as the dudes were boarding the buses to leave Bryce or Zion or the North Rim, the employees would all gather in front of the lodges and sing away their guests. This Sing Away became a significant and traditional experience for that 50 years.
It grew and changed, but it was groups of songs, different ones at different parks.

**Brad Westwood** (5:22)
This was everybody. They would gather all the youth, temporary employees out there on the front of the lodges, didn't they not?

**Janet Seegmiller** (5:32)
Yes. The bus drivers would honk their horns. The dudes would come out from where they had been eating breakfast or from their cabins. All the employees would leave their jobs and gather in front of the lodge and sing away their guests.