Item Detail
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32759
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0
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3
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English
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Bound to the Land: Cove Fort in Kesler Family History and Memory
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Utah Historical Quarterly
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2022
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90
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2
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Salt Lake City, UT
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Utah State Historical Society
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6-23
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"It is Cove Fort's twentieth-century history as a ranch and service station that I relate here. In doing so, I contextualize this history within existing literature on tourism in the West and explore how the Keslers creatively managed the land while capitalizing on the fort's distinctive heritage and its location along Highway 91, one of Utah's busiest thoroughfares before the coming of the interstate. The Kesler's management of Cove Fort speaks to the way in which tourist destinations impacted everyday life on the periphery. Locals like the Keslers adapted to and even benefited from changing times. They also fought to maintain a sense of autonomy, a way of life and understanding of the past that shaped their identity and relationship to the land... For most of Cove Fort's history, the Keslers called it home. They lived in the fort and worked the land to make it productive for livestock, developing an intense connection with the place that remains to this day. It was only when others threatened to remove the Keslers from Cove Fort that the family worked to make the site more accessible to passing travelers, finally turning the fort into a museum in the early 1960s. As the gatekeepers to Cove Fort's history, the Kesler family's experiences illustrate the politics of preservation: what gets preserved and why, along with how historical narratives are created and shaped." [Author]