I wasn’t born in Himni. It had plenty of history, by the time I got here. I’ve learned some of the past, but mostly, I’m just going to tell you about the stuff I’ve seen in this little town since my family arrived. Even so, you ought to know a little about Himni for reference purposes.
Situated in a lonely valley in Eastern Utah, Himni has always been a bit out of the way. When Brigham Young was sending folks into the far reaches of the Intermountain West, this must have been one of the last places he thought of. Himni was hard to reach, dry and pretty much inhospitable. We’ve always wondered if the first pioneers who came here weren’t chased rather than directed to come to such a place. The old folks somehow scratched out a living, but by the looks of things when I arrived, just barely. Then the gentiles started showing up. They were chasing minerals and oil and didn’t care much for cows and sheep. They prospered and the rest of the community began looking in their direction.
There never has been much of a quarrel between the Mormons and the gentiles out here, but the mixture has been interesting to see. That’s about all you need to know.
I arrived in 1962 and entered the seventh grade at Omner Valley Jr. High. That was about the time of Himni’s transition and I thought I might like to share some of those days with you. It was a different time. One today’s youngsters may even find hard to believe. I had just turned 12 and was pretty confused about life and living. I had lived in Salt Lake and Provo during my formative years. Not exactly big cities, but really something compared to Duchesne where I’d spent the past two. Now we had uprooted once again and moved to Himni, at least four times the size of Duchesne. The streets were paved. The library didn’t have wheels. They had a swimming pool.
Once when my kids were little they wondered how come I knew so much about the 50’s when I would have been too small to remember much. It was simple. The 50’s didn’t get to Himni ’til the 60’s. In many ways, thank goodness, the 60’s never did get here. There was that couple of weeks the Hippies were passing through town…which makes a great jumping off spot for a first story.
Growing Up in Himni, Utah 