Qualla: Skull Valley Indian Reservation

Skull Valley Indian Reservation: Introduction

Fri, 23 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Swilsonmc, CC BY-SA 4.0. The Goshute call it Wepayuttax. The name, in their dialect, carries the weight of centuries spent surviving in one of the harshest landscapes in North America. Today, only fifteen to twenty people live on the Skull Valley Indian Reservation, a small patch of high desert in Tooele County, Utah, roughly fifty miles southwest of Salt Lake City. The 134 registered members of the Skull Valley Band of Goshute Indians represent one of the smallest federally recognized tribes in the country, their reservation an island of sovereignty surrounded by some of the most toxic facilities the federal government has ever created.

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Skull Valley Indian Reservation: Survivors of the Wasteland

Fri, 23 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Swilsonmc, CC BY-SA 4.0. Spanish missionaries arrived in 1776, followed by fur trappers and the legendary Jedediah Smith. But the real devastation came with the Mormon settlers in 1847. White colonizers called the Goshute "diggers" and described them in dehumanizing terms. Mark Twain, passing through, di...

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Skull Valley Indian Reservation: A Toxic Embrace

Fri, 23 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Swilsonmc, CC BY-SA 4.0. The land the Goshute retained became an unintentional sacrifice zone. On nearly every side of the reservation, the federal government established facilities dealing in death. A hazardous waste landfill. The Deseret Chemical Depot, storing nerve agents among the most lethal substa...

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Skull Valley Indian Reservation: The Nuclear Gambit

Fri, 23 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Swilsonmc, CC BY-SA 4.0. In 1987, Congress created the Office of Nuclear Waste Negotiator to find communities willing to store high-level radioactive waste. Letters went out to every federally recognized tribe, offering millions of dollars. Most refused. The Skull Valley Band, seeing few economic alterna...

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Skull Valley Indian Reservation: The Meltdown

Fri, 23 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Swilsonmc, CC BY-SA 4.0. The nuclear money tore the tiny tribe apart. Tribal chairman Leon Bear faced fraud charges for misappropriating Private Fuel Storage funds, ultimately pleading guilty to lesser charges. His uncle Lawrence Bear served as chairman, then Leon returned, then Lawrence again. A soft co...

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Skull Valley Indian Reservation: Endurance

Fri, 23 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Swilsonmc, CC BY-SA 4.0. Lawrence Bear died in 2010. His daughter Lori Bear Skiby was elected chairwoman in 2011 and established a formal federal court system in 2013. The tribe persists, as it always has. Flash floods still threaten, as they have since 1878. The 2013 Patch Springs Fire left the watershe...

Image: Swilsonmc | CC BY-SA 4.0