Duchesne, Utah

Duchesne sits where the Strawberry and Duchesne Rivers meet at the mouth of Indian Canyon, the main passage through the Tavaputs Plateau into the Uintah Basin. Father Escalante camped near this confluence in September seventeen seventy-six while searching for a route between Santa Fe and the California missions. The river is thought to have been named by fur trappers honoring Mother Philippine Duchesne, a French nun who ran a mission school near Saint Louis in the eighteen twenties.

The town itself came into being in nineteen oh five, when the federal government opened the Ute reservation lands to homesteading. A trader named Murdock set up a post here and the settlement went through several names, including Dora and Theodore, before settling on Duchesne when another town to the east claimed the Roosevelt name. It became the county seat when Duchesne County was created in nineteen fourteen.