Bamberger Monument

Prison inmates built this monument to the governor who put them to work. Under a 1911 law, Utah began sending convicts out of their cells to build state roads — and in the summers of 1917 and 1918, prisoners graded the hard road between Castle Gate and Duchesne. From quarried Kyune stone they also raised this shaft to Simon Bamberger, the reform governor of those years, Utah's first Jewish and first non-Mormon chief executive. It is an unusual thing: a monument to a politician, cut and set by the men his roads were built with.

What the plaque says

Erected in 1918, by inmates of The Utah State Penitentiary. This monument honors Simon Bamberger, Governor of Utah from 1917 through 1920. Under a state law passed in 1911 permitting prisoners to work on State roads, the prisoners participated in road work on the Castle Gate-Duchesne Road during the summers of 1917 and 1918. The stone was obtained from the Kyune stone quarries in the hills northwest of the monument.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Prehistoric Museum at USU Eastern — 14 mi
  A small-town museum punching way above its weight in dinosaur science
• Price — 14 mi
  A gritty coal mining town with a surprisingly excellent dinosaur museum

More markers nearby

• Pleasant Valley Coal Company — 6.5 mi
• Utah's Coal Industry — 6.5 mi
• Castle Gate Mine Disaster — 6.5 mi
• Geneva/Horse Canyon Mine Monument — 8.9 mi