Watch For Sanpete Messenger 16th Home & Garden magazine to be mailed to every household in Sanpete County on Friday
EPHRAIM—The Utah State Charter School Board has approved a proposal by American Preparatory Academy (APA), which operates nine charter schools in Utah, to establish a K-6 charter school in Ephraim Crossing. The school will be built on a 5.2-acre site reserved for that purpose in the 300-acre planned community southwest of McDonald’s. According to a…
EPHRAIM—The Ephraim City Council has approved a 164-unit apartment complex, approximately 6.3 acres, in Ephraim Crossing—the largest non-student complex to date in the city. At a city council meeting last Wednesday, Feb. 4, Mike Ballard, managing partner in the Camino Verde Group-Ephraim South, the developer the Ephraim Crossing, said the apartment project “is specifically designed…
SPRING CITY—Lawsuits pitting opponents of zoning changes in Spring City against the former Spring City Council are over.Within three weeks after the first Spring City Council meeting of the year on Jan. 8, one suit was settled out of court; the plaintiff in a second suit withdrew it; and a third action filed with the…
SALT LAKE CITY—Sen. Derrin Owens and Rep. Troy Shelley, the Utah legislators representing Sanpete County, agree that “right sizing” state government, including requiring state colleges and agencies to cut lower-priority programs and reallocate the money to higher priorities, will possibly be the biggest focus of the 2026 Legislature.Meanwhile, in an interview Tuesday, Owens said the…
MORONI—A man who lost last year in a contest for Moroni City Council has been appointed to fill a seat vacated by Troy Prestwich, was elected as the town’s new mayor.Kevin Taylor, who ran against Jacob Bagley in the November election for a two-year term, was the only applicant for the position. His term will…
SPRING CITY—An external audit of Spring City’s finances culminated in a “clean opinion, an unmodified opinion, and that’s the best opinion you can receive,” auditor Ron Snow told the Spring City Council at this month’s council meeting.Over the past year, there have been allegations against the mayor and city council, all unverified, of “sweetheart deals”…
EPHRAIM—After a half-day of brainstorming about long-term goals, about 15 city council members and department heads in Ephraim settled on three focus areas for the city over next three years.The emphases will be infrastructure development, updating the general land use plan and preparing an economic development plan.Staff in various departments are now coming up with…
SPRING CITY—Joe and Lee Bennion have won a battle in their legal fight to dispel claims that they are leaders in an LDS Church of Satan, and as such, have participated in crimes ranging from child sexual abuse to cannibalism. But they haven’t won the war.In September, Judge Kasey Wright of the 4th District Court…
It’s time for compromise and resolution of the lot-size issue in Spring City. For some, preserving the grid set up by pioneer settlers, with 1.06-acre lots city wide, is at the center of everything they’ve worked for 40 years. For others the acre lot size is a burden, a requirement to have more land than…
I recently returned from a meeting of the International Society of Weekly Newspaper Editors (ISWNE) at South Dakota State University in Brookings, S.D. Many of the participants had retired from their newspapers. A few were using walkers and wheelchairs. A lot of others, like me, were past retirement age but still working for their papers…
Brennen Russell, Moroni public works director, is standing next to the city’s new, 600,000-gallon water tank, most of which is underground. In the background is some of the new housing development that helped spur a $6-million expansion of the city water system. By Suzanne Dean and John Hales MORONI—Earlier this year Moroni City completed…
A boardwalk leads to Finnish saunas heated by burning wood at Mumma’s Sauna Village in Mt. Pleasant. (Inset): Tina Geddes, a native Finn, stands in the doorway of one of the saunas at a new recreation development in Mt. Pleasant. MT. PLEASANT—Time in a hot, dry sauna, followed by dumping a bucket of cold water…
This is a part of the Home & Garden 2025, a yearly supplement to the Sanpete Messenger. To view the rest of the articles, click this banner. At a birthday luncheon in mid-April, a drawer pulled out of a cabinet somewhere in Marla Deaton’s house was used as the base for a centerpiece consisting of…
One of the legendary figures in the Rocky Mountain sheep industry is Hank Vogler, who runs the “Needsmore Sheep Ranch” in Spring Valley south of Las Vegas. He spoke during the storytelling session at the 2025 gathering. FILLMORE—Ah, 22 years. Twenty-two winters, that is. That’s how many years the Old Sheepherder’s Gathering, which brings together…
This is a part of the Home & Garden 2025, a yearly supplement to the Sanpete Messenger. To view the rest of the articles, click this banner. Peggy Layton of Manti, a former home economist for a food-storage company and author of books on food storage, in her own food storage area. MANTI—Whether by bottling,…