Saturday, April 7, 2012

Reference question for the day

There always seems to be a new local history question come up that I have never heard before. Today someone wanted to know about a federal building in Brigham that was blown up in the 70's. I hadn't seen any mention of that in anything I've read and because the date was so vague, it would be hard to find on microfilm in the News Journal. I called on a local historian again and she led me to a source that immediately came up this this answer... Local highschool kids blew up the ROTC building sometime during the Vietnam years. A teacher at the high school thought it would be good for the students to hear positive and opposing ideas regarding the war. He got a Communist organizer from Logan to come in and speak and this person  got the kids so excited, some of them decided to pour two 5 gallon tanks worth of gas around the ROTC building and set fire to it. I still don't know the exact date or how many were involved, but it is an interesting bit of local history I never knew before.  Do you have more information regarding this event? Let us know!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

There is an article in the Ogden paper from Oct. 9, 1971 but I can't read it. My husband was questioned by the FBI about it but the details are scetchy.

Brigham City Carnegie Library said...

I'll have to see if I can find that article - thank you!