Cedar City is Southern Utah's First

The distinction of being southern Utah’s oldest Rotary club goes to Cedar City, chartered as RI Club #2083 on June 10, 1925 after the Salt Lake Rotary Club voted to share its territory to organize the state’s first club south of the Wasatch Front. Throughout its impressive 84-year history, the Cedar City Rotary Club has contributed in countless ways to their community, state and the world. Host of the 2005 Utah Rotary District Conference during RI’s Centennial Year, Cedar City Rotarians support the Happy Factory, Boy Scouts, YouthLinc, RYLA, Civil Air Patrol, Cedar City Arts, Boys and Girls State and Rotary Youth Exchange. Members of this club have also gotten involved in literacy issues, raised impressive amounts of funds through golf tournaments and the July Jamboree event; and distributed thousands of dictionaries over the past several years. Internationally they have focused on youth, sanitation and water with several projects in India.

In celebration of the Centennial of Rotary’s founding in 1905, the Cedar City Rotary Club organized an effort to create a Veterans Park in their community. The Club raised and donated the needed $50,000 to get the project underway. A Steering Committee, made up mostly of Rotarians, created committees for each of the wars: WWII, Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq/Afghanistan. Robert Mercer, a local architect created the overall design with monuments from each war. The park was dedicated in 2008. In that same year, the club was honored by the Cedar Area Chamber of Commerce with the 2008 Organization for Community Service Award. The Chamber also honored two Rotarians: Jane Norman with the 2008 Outstanding Woman of the Year Award; and, Brian Jorgensen’s business, Mountain West Books and Harmony House with 2008 Progressive Business of the Year Award. Soon after the dedication of the Veterans Park in 2008, Cedar City Rotarians pledged $20,000 to local leaders for the creation of Main Street Park’s entrance signage. Cedar City Rotary Club is truly an example of "service above self" and that a small group of people can change the world!