Provo West Co-op: Utah's Cooperative Economy
Near Provo, Utah
The building that still stands on the corner of Center Street is one of the oldest commercial structures in Provo, and it tells a story about how early Latter-day Saint communities organized their economies. The building dates to about eighteen sixty-six, and its store became the Provo West Co-op in eighteen sixty-nine, part of Brigham Young's push to build cooperative mercantile institutions throughout Utah Territory. Young feared that outside merchants were draining cash from Mormon settlements, so he encouraged congregations to pool resources and operate their own stores.
The co-ops, called United Orders in their most communal form, kept profits local and gave members a stake in their own commerce. The Provo cooperative thrived during the territorial years before transitioning to private ownership. Its nineteenth-century commercial block now sits on the National Register of Historic Places as a tangible remnant of Utah's experiment in collective economics.
