Utah Heritage Foundation

Top Secret:  For Your Eyes Only

A Tour of Historic Wendover Airbase

Date:               August 27, 2011

Time:               10:00 am – 2pm (approximately 4 hours)

Location:        Wendover Airport, 345 Airport Apron, Wendover, Utah

The foundation remnants of the town of Iosepa (pronounced yo-see-pah) lay under the sand and dust of the west desert.  Once the home to over 200 Polynesian and Hawaiian settlers, a prominent marker and small cemetery provide the only physical reminders of a once successful enclave for South Sea Islanders.  As converts to the Mormon Church, Hawaiians came to be near the Salt Lake City LDS Temple but were ethnically discriminated against.  Not finding many places they could call home, the LDS Church purchased land in the Skull Valley of Tooele County, west of the Stansbury Mountains for the creation of a new settlement.  On the first day in 1889, 75 Hawaiians went to their new home, plotted home sites, and named it Iosepa, a Hawaiian name for Joseph after LDS Church founder Joseph Smith.

Though there were many successful years of growing the town, ultimately it became difficult to make a self sustaining community in the desert.  When the LDS Church announced in 1917 that a new temple would be built in Hawaii, the first outside the continental U.S., that was the end of Iosepa as the majority of the islanders left for home.  Though the settlement was not long lived, the traditions and efforts of those first South Sea Islands pioneers still run deep and are celebrated every year at the site during Memorial Day weekend.

This dig is a fabulous chance to interact with a prominent Utah site of ethnic history.  Join in the day of discovery!