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LETTERS TO THE PEOPLES CANAL PRESIDENT 1895-1899

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Many short accounts of the Peoples Canal construction exist, including that in Miracle of the Desert by Thomas Williams. While all deal with the travails of Mormon settlers who built the canal, its primary leader through its early years, Benjamin Cluff (who was also president of Brigham Young Academy in Provo, now BYU), gets almost no mention.


Luckily, letters to Cluff from canal board members, Idaho politicians, canal attorneys and creditors were saved in his papers by BYU. The letters remained sealed for seventy years but are now in the public domain.



This letter is one of the most telling of the two hundred plus collection, as it suggests that Benjamin Cluff lied about the Peoples Canal's progress. Typewritten, it presents an easier task for the researcher—most of the letters, typewriters being in relatively short supply at the time, were handwritten—than those like the one below.



This letter from John Watson shows a better penmanship than most, and being relatively free of grammatical and spelling errors requires little guessing. Many other correspondents claimed English as a second language and must have found writing letters difficult. That they braved their lack of English proficiency to write to President Cluff is admirable in the extreme.


Utilizing the archived letters and other source material, We, the Peoples: Two Canals' War for Territory came into being and is now available online at



Thanks to Jesus Martinez for the cover photo. You've seen his work online, impressive photos depicting sunsets and landscapes around southeast Idaho.

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