Governor Simon Bamberger

Born in Eberstadt, Hesse-Darmstadt, Germany, SIMON BAMBERGER came to the United States as a teenager, settling in Utah in his mid-twenties. There he became involved in a variety of businesses, among them hotels, coal and metal mines, railroads, and an amusement resort. He first held public office as a member of the Salt Lake City Board of Education, after which he served in the state Senate before being elected governor at the age of seventy-one. Bamberger was a strong supporter of prohibition and succeeded in securing a prohibition law shortly after taking office. He was involved in the establishment of a Public Utilities Commission, a Department of Public Health, a non-partisan judiciary, and a Board of Control to supervise the state’s penal system, industrial school, mental hospital, and school for the disabled. He also worked for enactment of workers compensation legislation and turned a large state deficit into a surplus during his four years in office. Despite his popularity with the Mormon population of Utah, Bamberger chose not to run for a second term, returning instead to his business interests—including his chairmanship of the Bamberger Railroad and presidency of the Salt Lake and Denver Railroad Company.