About the Author

Photograph by Craig Law

Frederick M. Huchel was destined to be an historian. He was born in Brigham City the summer Utahns were celebrating the centennial of the arrival of the Mormon Pioneers into the Salt Lake Valley. He was acquainted with a number of Brigham City’s older generation, people who had been born before the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad on May 10, 1869, just twenty-eight miles west of Brigham City.

He grew up in the oldest house standing in Brigham City, built before the Move South in 1858, by one of the pioneers of the United Order coöperative.

His grandfather and great grandfather, on his Brigham City side, came from Denmark. His Brigham City grandmother was born in Brigham City, of parents who came from Wales. He is the quintessential Brigham City pioneer descendent.

At age seventeen, he was the youngest member in the Sons of Utah Pioneers, and, dressed in his Mormon Battalion uniform, carried the national banner at the head of the 24th of July Pioneer Day Parade in Salt Lake City. He was also, at that time, curator of the Railroad Village Museum in Corinne.

In his twenties, he became director of the Brigham City Museum-Gallery, while studying history along with his biology major at Brigham Young University.

He was selected to author the statehood centennial volume A History of Box Elder County. He has written and lectured on Utah history in various parts of the state.

He is listed in The Dictionary of Utah Art and Who’s Who in the West, the prestigious Who’s Who in America, and the Millennium Edition of Who’s Who in the World.
He and his wife, Cherie, live not far from Brigham City.