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Huntington Men's Glee Club
Organized 1919, it continues today in 2025

Historical notes on this evening's numbers:

''The Utah Trail," written by Bob Palmer, was published in a collection of ''MIA Sociability Songs" in 1933. It became more widely known in 1938 when it was sung by cowboy movie star Tex Ritter in a film of the same name. It was later recorded by the Sons of the Pioneers, among other musical artists. For several decades, ''Utah Trail'' could have been considered as Utah's unofficial state song. The Glee Club accompanist, Annette Swasey Cook, can remember when radio station KOAL played a recording of ''The Utah Trail" as its ''sign-off'' at the end of each broadcast day.

There is a generic quality to the message in ''The Utah Trail." It could be applied to any Western natural setting, but the_rhythm called for a two-syllable name, hence ''Utah'' rather than ''Colorado."

By contrast, our second number, "Where the Sunset Tints the Castles on the Hills," can be tied to only one landscape. It is a hymn to Emery County, composed in 1917 by Huntington native Rolla V. Johnson ( 1889-1971 ). Rolla Johnson taught school in Huntington and Mohrland then spent his later career in Nevada, where he developed some of the first band programs in the schools. The song lyrics show a poet's touch and a sharp eye for landscape details.

There are numerous castle-like rock formations in Emery County, but "the castles on the hills'' are most particularly the ridge of imposing blocks, domes, knobs, spires, and gorges extending from Windowblind Butte to the San Rafael Knob, as viewed from the communities in western Emery County. Johnson accurately observed that the appearance of the ''castles'' changes throughout the day, looking "golden" in the morning light, fading to a dusty blue at midday, then coming vividly alive at sunset: a visual pageant repeated every day, and without an admission charge .