At first, Chris Merritt couldn’t believe his eyes.
It was the opening day of an archeological survey he organized near the ghost town of Silver Reef northeast of St. George. His goal was to find physical evidence of the Chinatown he believed was once there, and he didn’t have to look far.
“The ground was shimmering with material culture, what we call artifacts, from China,” the Utah Historic Preservation Office archaeologist said. “So I’m like, ‘OK, we’re in the right spot. We’re in the right location.’”
Over the next two days, Merritt’s survey team — which included local volunteers and representatives from the Bureau of Land Management and Chinese Railroad Workers Descendents Association — found more than 500 examples of Chinese artifacts. Piece by piece, these discoveries are helping to paint a picture of life in southern Utah’s only Chinatown.
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Researchers already had some idea that Silver Reef — a silver mining boom town in the 1870s and 1880s — was home to a group of Chinese residents, he said, but this was the first study into what their lives may have looked like.
“They don’t show up in history books. They don’t show up in diaries. These artifacts are truly their testimony to their lives.”
Courtesy of Utah State Historic Preservation Office
Examples of Chinese artifacts the survey team found at the Silver Reef Chinatown site.
He hypothesized that the town’s Chinese residents lived together in their own neighborhood. He honed in on the potential site by overlaying modern-day aerial images with historical town maps. The density of artifacts at the survey site not only proved his theory and pinpointed Chinatown’s location, but also blew past his expectations.
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The Silver Reef Chinatown site is hardly remote, straddling BLM land just northeast of St. George near I-15 and popular hiking trails. So he expected that most of the pottery and other items would have been carried off at some point in the 140 years since the town’s heyday.
Instead, the team found the desert floor littered with fragments of fine porcelain cups and bowls, many hand-painted with delicate blue flowers and bamboo shoots. They also spotted pieces of giant rice vessels large enough to fit a person — something he hadn’t seen at other Chinatown sites near Utah’s Transcontinental Railroad — along with containers of imported soy sauce, pickled eggs and dried ginger.
That shows the town had shops catering to Chinese customers who wanted the comforts of home.
“You can almost start smelling the food in the back of these businesses and homes, smelling much like Pearl River Delta in Guangdong province.”
Those imported eggs and sauces would have had quite a journey, crossing the Pacific Ocean by boat before arriving in Silver Reef on a wagon because the town had no railroad line. It adds up to a community with an incredible global trade system that appears much more complex than many of the other boom-and-bust Chinatowns that popped up across the West at that time.
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“When there’s people who want things, things will get there,” Merritt said. “The freight wagons were the Amazon delivery driver of the day.”
Courtesy of the Utah State Historic Preservation Office
Volunteers mark artifact locations with flags during the Silver Reef Chinatown archeological survey in November 2023.
The U.S. Census and other archives indicate that at least 250 Chinese immigrants lived there during the town’s peak, but Merritt said that’s likely an undercount. That’s partly because the residents formed a town within a town, pushed there by the racism they faced and by a desire for their own community.
The typical Chinatown resident, he said, would have been a young adult man with little money or education. Most would have worked service jobs, such as laundry or cooking, because the local mining union barred them based on their race. But some belonged to a higher socioeconomic class, too — Silver Reef’s Chinatown even had an herbal doctor.
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LoAnne Barnes, a board member at the local Silver Reef Museum, said these discoveries bring the region’s diverse history to life — something all Utahns can benefit from.
“The more we can appreciate the history of the ethnic groups that make up this country, the stronger country we would be.”
The museum already features a display highlighting the town’s Chinese history, and she hopes some of the items will add to that.
Even with all of these recent findings, Merritt said, the survey is only scratching the surface of Silver Reef’s full history. He plans to continue exploring and cataloging the items found on the surface before potentially excavating and preparing items for public display.
Someday, he hopes to help put up interpretive signs near the site so visitors can learn more about the town’s Chinese residents while walking in their footsteps.
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“That’s why these types of places are so significant. … They can transmit you back into that period, and you can almost hear that town booming and the mining sounds and the stamp mills and 15 different languages being spoken. And you start feeling a lot more connected to that place.”
Randall will be among several key visitors in attendance for a meeting on March 6
(Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) University of Utah President Taylor Randall speaks on campus during an event on Feb. 7.
University of Utah President Taylor Randall is scheduled to meet with President Donald Trump this week.
Randall is expected to be among several attendees at a White House roundtable meeting on Friday to discuss solutions for the rapidly evolving landscape of college athletics with the president, a U. spokesperson said.
The meeting could be postponed, however, due to the war in Iran. As of Monday, “the odds of it happening this week are 50-50 at best,” according to Yahoo Sports.
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If the roundtable happens as scheduled, the guest list includes several current and former notable figures in sports, including NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, golf legend Tiger Woods and former Alabama head coach Nick Saban.
Utah Gov. Spencer Cox confirmed in a social media post on X that he would be in attendance as well.
“Thank you [President Donald Trump] for inviting me to participate, and for your commitment to addressing challenges in college sports,” Cox said on X. “[Taylor Randall] is a great university leader who will work with us on solutions for this critical issue.”
(Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) University of Utah President Taylor Randall speaks on campus on Feb. 7.
Earlier this year, Randall was called on by the federal House Committee on Education and Workforce to schedule a briefing to discuss the school’s planned private-equity partnership with Otro Capital, according to a report from Sportico.
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The Utes announced their proposal in December of last year, which is a first-of-its-kind agreement between a university’s athletic department and a private equity company.
Utah’s deal with Otro has yet to be finalized. In a Feb. 10 interview with The Salt Lake Tribune, Randall said the university is “still just working through all of the issues systematically.”
“We want to do this in the right way to set both of us up for future success,” he added.
The move is expected to infuse hundreds of millions of dollars into the U.’s athletic department to help sustain the financial future of the program with rising deficits across the industry.
“I don’t think any of us would prefer to be in this situation right now,” Randall said in a faculty senate meeting in January. “But it just is what we’re facing.”
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SALT LAKE CITY (KUTV) — The 2025-2026 winter season isn’t quite over, but it’s no secret that it’s been a rough one when it comes to snow. Right now, statewide snowpack numbers are hovering around 60% of the median.
But you don’t have to know those numbers to understand what a strange winter it’s been.
“It’s kind of good,” said Carrie Stewart, who lives in Salt Lake City. “I mean, I like it because I like a milder climate. But I realize this summer is going to be hard.”
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“I’m not sad I’m not shoveling,” said Sally Humphreys of Salt Lake City. “But it’s definitely worrying.”
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State water officials are also worried. The clock is ticking to bulk up those snowpack numbers.
“We’re running out of time to get the snowpack that we need,” said Jordan Clayton, supervisor of the Utah Snow Survey. “We have about 40 or so days until our typical snowpack peak.”
There is still some time to make up lost ground, but the odds aren’t great. Clayton estimates a 10% chance of reaching normal by the end of the season.
“Those are terrible odds,” he said.
In fact, the odds of having a record low snowpack are greater, sitting at 20%. It’s a grim reality that has officials looking toward the summer anxiously.
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“I would expect to see watering restrictions outdoors for a lot of places,” said Laura Haskell, Utah’s drought coordinator.
It’s unknown what the next few weeks will bring, but if Haskell had to guess, she doesn’t see state reservoirs filling up much from where they are now.
“In the spring when that runoff hits, we do get a noticeable peak in our reservoir storage,” Haskell said. “The water just starts coming in. But this year, we don’t anticipate getting that.”
Haskell says we have enough reservoir storage to likely make it through the summer, but there are other implications to worry about.
Our autumn season was pretty wet. That led to decent soil moisture levels, which can then lead to higher vegetation growth.
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“If we then have a snowpack that melts out really early, we’ll have a longer than normal summer, if you will, with forage growth that might dry out, and so that’s kind of a bad recipe for promoting fire hazard,” Clayton said.
Utahns have dealt with low snowpack levels in the past. Many Utahns are familiar with their lawn turning brown because of water restrictions.
“We’ll probably just let it go that nice, sandy, golden color that it gets in the summer in a dry climate,” said Dea Ann Kate, who lives in Cottonwood Heights.
As we wait to see what the next few weeks bring, people like Carrie Stewart are just reflecting on an unusual winter.
“It is worrying,” she said. “We need snow. We’ve only shoveled once this season, and that’s very unusual.”
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Water officials are now hoping for something else unusual: climbing out of the snowpack hole that’s been created.
“But there are no times going back where the snowpack totals for the state were close to where they are right now, and we ended up actually at a normal peak,” Clayton said. “So while it’s possible, it’s very unlikely.”
SALT LAKE CITY — The presence of federal immigration agents tracking immigrants has increased in Salt Lake County-area courtrooms since mid-February as have complaints about how they’re carrying out their duties.
United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents may have carried out operations at the Matheson Courthouse in Salt Lake City, according to Lacey Singleton, a public defender who’s regularly at the facility.
“Now it is like they are there all the time … They just basically hang out, and they’re either sitting in the courtroom, or they’re lurking in the hallways,” she said. They wear normal street garb, she said, but for regulars in the courtroom, “they stand out.”
Immigration enforcement action at courthouses around the country has become “a cornerstone” in the efforts of the administration of President Donald Trump to detain and deport immigrants in the country illegally, according to the American Immigration Council, an immigrant advocacy group. Since an arrest of one of Lacey’s clients around Feb. 12 or 13, she and others say, the practice has become more and more common in Utah.
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ICE didn’t respond to a KSL query seeking comment, but the practice aligns with the Trump administration’s push to crack down on illegal immigration. Agency guidance notes that the people ICE seeks may appear in courthouses to address unrelated criminal and civil matters, and that such facilities are typically secure.
“Accordingly, when ICE engages in civil immigration enforcement actions in or near courthouses, it can reduce safety risks to the public, targeted alien(s) and ICE officers and agents,” reads a May 27 memo on the matter.
Critics, though, say immigration agents’ efforts can be disruptive and could spur immigrants, otherwise trying to resolve their legal issues, to steer clear of court, jeopardizing their cases. As word spreads of the activity, it could also spur fearful immigrant witnesses and crime victims to steer clear of the legal system, Lacey worries.
Salt Lake County Sheriff Rosie Rivera brought the issue up at a Salt Lake County Council meeting on Tuesday, saying her office has received “multiple complaints” about ICE agents’ activity in Salt Lake County courthouses, where sheriff’s officials, serving as court bailiffs, provide security.
U.S. agents have ratcheted up immigration enforcement action at Utah courthouses, prompting criticism from some. The photo shows attorney Lacey Singleton, center, questioning a suspected agent recently at Matheson Courthouse in Salt Lake City. (Photo: Salt Lake City Bail Fund)
Part of the problem, she said, is that the agents typically wear plain clothes and don’t identify themselves, not even to bailiffs. Another issue relates to the actual process of taking an immigrant into custody, which Rivera says should occur outside of public view with the suspects’ lawyers present.
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In one instance, she said, a bailiff heard a scuffle and thought someone was getting assaulted, only to find out it was ICE agents detaining somebody.
A bailiff and an ICE agent subsequently “got into a verbal altercation,” Rivera said. “We are addressing that issue, but I want you to understand, these deputies are put in a really tough situation, and in this situation, I understand how he could get to that point where he had no idea who they were, and he was trying to make sure that somebody wasn’t being assaulted at the time.”
Video from last week, posted to social media by the Salt Lake City Bail Fund, shows Lacey walking past a suspected immigration agent at the Matheson Courthouse, asking for identification but getting no reply. The Salt Lake City Bail Fund, critical of ICE activity, sends observers to the Matheson Courthouse to monitor the agency’s activity.
“That’s a problem because it’s like, who are you?” Lacey said. “For all I know, you’re some random dude who is just, like, off the street and participating in kidnapping people.”
Video supplied to KSL shows an incident outside Riverton Justice Court on Wednesday — four apparent immigration agents in plain clothes wrestling on the ground with an apparent suspect they were trying to take into custody.
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“Don’t resist,” someone off-camera says in Spanish while filming the incident. “Son, don’t resist. Calm down. They’re going to hurt you more.”
The woman asks for his name and contact info after the agents cuff him and take him to a nearby car, while another man on the scene shouts at the officials and berates them. “You guys are disgusting,” the man says.
Anna Reganis, a public defender with the Salt Lake Legal Defender Association, like Lacey, said immigration agents detained a man at Salt Lake City Justice Court on Wednesday. She didn’t witness the actual detention, but heard the aftermath.
“All of a sudden, in my courtroom, we could hear from the lobby blood-curdling screams,” Reganis said. She went to the main lobby, finding a woman holding her infant baby “just inconsolably screaming and crying.” Turns out the woman had gone to the courthouse with her husband, and he had just been detained by immigration agents.
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Lacey maintains that the people the ICE agents seem to be pursuing aren’t the most hardened of criminals, which the Trump administration said would be the focus when the crackdown started. Reganis echoed that, noting that those with business in the Salt Lake City Justice Court face relatively minor offenses.
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“Myself and my co-workers all had a bit of a wake-up call because we kept telling ourselves that this wasn’t going to happen at the justice court because all of our cases are class B and C misdemeanors and infractions,” she said.
The Salt Lake City Bail Fund launched training sessions late last year for volunteers to serve as courthouse observers, particularly at the Matheson Courthouse. Liz Maryon, who helps oversee the effort, foresees another round of training to get more help. “We’re currently working on expanding our capacity so that we can be there every day,” she said.
The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.
