Roosevelt, Utah

Roosevelt is a town that was born from a land lottery. In nineteen oh five Congress opened the unallotted lands of the Ute Indian Reservation in the Uintah Basin to homesteading, and President Theodore Roosevelt signed the proclamation that summer. Thousands of hopeful settlers gathered in Provo and Grand Junction to draw lots for claims in the basin.

A homesteader named Ed Harmston turned his claim into a town site and laid out lots. His wife chose the name Roosevelt in honor of the president who had opened the land. The town incorporated in nineteen thirteen and became the commercial hub of Duchesne County. The deeper history here is uncomfortable: the Uintah Basin had been deliberately designated as a reservation partly because settlers considered it a wasteland, and when oil and agricultural potential became clear, the Ute lands were opened and reduced. The Ute Indian Tribe's reservation headquarters remains in nearby Fort Duchesne.