Between 1864 and 1872 Rich represented Rich County in the Utah territorial legislature, until it became clear that most of the Bear Lake settlements were in Idaho. Rich remained an active Democrat in local politics and, as a Mormon apostle, supervised both the religious and secular lives of Bear Lake settlers. Rich was organizing the colonization of Star Valley, Wyoming, before being partially paralyzed by a stroke in 1880. He died three years later, on 17 November 1883 at the age of seventy-five, the father of fifty-one children and grandfather of eighty-five.

Although Charles C. Rich spent relatively few years in Utah proper, he was a major figure in the settlement of Utah and in the social and political history of "Mormon Country."

See: Leonard J. Arrington, Charles C. Rich: Mormon General and Western Frontiersman (1974); John Henry Evans, Charles Coulson Rich: Pioneer Builder of the West (1936).

David Rich Lewis