The Mormon History Association invites you to the Ogden Eccles Conference Center in Utah for its sixtieth annual conference to be held June 5-8, 2025. Situated on the Ogden and Weber Rivers near where they join the Great Salt Lake and nicknamed “Junction City” when it became the connecting point between numerous railroad lines, Ogden has long been a site of junctions. Long before Latter-day Saints dreamed of an American Zion in the Great Basin, ancestors of Shoshone and other indigenous peoples criss-crossed the region, establishing trade networks and sharing languages, settlements, and cultures.
Ogden highlights a confluence of events and dynamics that shaped Mormon settlement, identity, and culture, and ensured that the tradition would always be intertwined with the wider world. The railroad especially brought diverse groups to Ogden. Wealthy investors and industrialists as well as Black Americans and Chinese, Japanese, German, and Irish immigrants were drawn to the burgeoning railroad town and its economic opportunities, bringing greater influence from the margins. They built communities that both constituted and contradicted centers of Latter-day Saint power, resulting in diversity, and alternative directions. Conversely, families like Apostle Franklin D. and Jane S. Richards represented Ogden’s influence on the highest levels of the church.
In the 20th century, international and national events continued to encourage convergence at Ogden. World War II brought a military base, prisoner of war camps, and defense industries. Later immigration trends further heightened the diverse influences and people that would shape Utah and today’s global church. Influenced by outside elements, Ogden’s Mormon community continued to develop a unique religious and cultural brand that included diverse politics and a cultural presence perhaps best represented by the Osmonds, as well as iconic Mormon composer Janice Kapp Perry. Ogden also produced several prominent western historians including Fawn Brodie, Bernard Devoto, and more recently Thomas Alexander, a founding member of MHA.
While distance and distinction from others are popular tropes in the telling of Mormon histories, gathering in “Junction City” invites us to widen the lens and remember the many histories of interaction and influence that have shaped and been shaped by Restoration traditions. Ogden’s Union Station embodies the variety of these historical junctures, sitting as it does at the intersection of Wall Avenue’s business world and 25th Street’s demimonde history.
Mina Thomas Brett, a Hudson Valley, NY native, is a versatile artist skilled in Jazz, Gospel, and Soul. She holds a degree in Contemporary Music Studies and Jazz vocals from SUNY New Paltz, grounding her natural talent in solid education.
Katie Nelson (PhD, University of Warwick) is a World Historian, and author of What's Her Name: A History of the World in 80 Lost Women.
A graduate of the University of Utah and the Harvard Law School. Conan worked as an international lawyer in both Japan and the U.S. and is co-author of a recent book: Unique But Not Different: Latter-day Saints in Japan.
She is a co-author of Carry On: The Latter-day Saint Young Women Organization, 1870–2024 and editor on the four-volume Saints series published by the Church Historians Press.
Amber Taylor is co-author of Carry On: The Latter-day Saint Young Women Organization, 1870–2024. PhD in Near Eastern and Judaic Studies from Brandeis University and a BA in Spanish Translation from Brigham Young University.
She is a co-author of Carry On: The Latter-day Saint Young Women Organization, 1870–2024. MA in Victorian Studies from the University of Leicester.
Historian, playwright and poet. He is a co-author of Carry On: The Latter-day Saint Young Women Organization, 1870–2024. MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Brigham Young University.
Matthew L. Harris is Professor of History and Director of Legal Studies at Colorado State University-Pueblo. Author of Second-Class Saints: Black Mormons and the Struggle for Racial Equality (Oxford University Press, 2024)
Cynthia C. Prescott is Professor of History and Chair of History & American Indian Studies at the University of North Dakota. Author of Gender and Generation on the Far Western Frontier and Pioneer Mother Monuments: Constructing Cultural Memory.
Mormon History Association, President. PhD in women's history and the history of American West, BYU-Idaho.
Mormon History Association, President Elect. PhD from the University of Cambridge. Author of Kingdom of Nauvoo: The Rise and Fall of a Religious Empire on the American Frontier and American Zion: A New History of Mormonism.
Rachel Cope is an associate professor of Church history and doctrine at Brigham Young University. She received a PhD in American History, with an emphasis in women's history and religious history, from Syracuse University.
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