CLARION, UTAH

''Clarion, Utah'' (Location: 39.12229N 111.8864W) was the site of a brief, early-twentieth century experiment in Jewish rural living. For several decades, many Jewish reformers and Zionist nationalists had argued that Jews needed to become "a normal nation" and urged the abandonment of both urban living and occupations traditionally associated with Jews. This back-to-the-land movement urged Jews to find a purer life and to renounce sedentary jobs in favor of those based on manual labor.
The leader was Benjamin Brown, who arrived in 1911. Although the settlement was small, with just 23 families, optimism was high. Utah had been advertising nationally to receive more settlers, and the governor was so pleased with the experiment, that he journeyed the 135 miles from the capital in order to celebrate the community's first harvest. [1]
However, due to problems with harvests and the incompetence of the urban settlers, the settlement faced financial problems and the state foreclosed on the property in 1915. Most of the settlers returned to New York City. [2]

Contents

Clarion in Culture

Bibliography

External Links

Clarion in Culture

★ The community was featured in a segment in the 2007 play ''.

Bibliography

★ Dinnerstein, Leonard. "Back to the Soil: The Jewish Farmers of Clarion, Utah, and Their World" by Robert Alan Goldberg, in ''The Western Historical Quarterly'', Vol. 19, No. 1 (Jan., 1988), pp. 70-71

★ Goldberg,, Robert Alan. "The Clarion Colony", ''Utah History Encyclopedia'' [3]

★ Sarna, Jonathan D. "Back to the Soil: The Jewish Farmers of Clarion, Utah, and Their World" by Robert Alan Goldberg, in ''The Journal of American History'', Vol. 74, No. 4 (Mar., 1988), pp. 1369-1370.

External Links

★ Waterhistory

★ Robert A. Goldberg Collection photographs

★ Clarion, Utah homepage

★ Utah History Encyclopedia