On Aug. 17, 1929, about 15,000 people gathered in the rain on Salt Lake City's east bench to celebrate the arrival of natural gas.

To start a big construction job in the Wasatch Mountains in January, you have to be (1) a little bit crazy or (2) so focused on your goal that you won't let a little thing like winter get in your way. Or both.

With the perspective of hindsight, you might question the sanity of those who ordered work to start on Questar's first natural gas pipeline in January 1929. But you can't question their resolve.

The construction of that pipeline has become part of company folklore. It involved:

¥ shoveling five feet of snow off the right-of-way and blasting through the frozen ground underneath.

¥ dragging lengths of pipe through the snow to the job site with teams of horses when trucks floundered.

¥ airlifting food to a convoy of workers stranded in a blizzard near Wamsutter, Wyo.

¥ and rescuing equipment and horses from quagmires when spring thaws turned mountains of snow into rivers of mud.

In spite of those hardships, and many others, crews working for a Questar predecessor finished the job on time, installing a 334-mile pipeline network to bring natural gas from new wells in Wyoming and Colorado to the cities of northern Utah. In the fall of 1929, 75 years ago, crews of technicians spread out in Salt Lake City and Ogden, converting appliances to burn the new fuel. In a ceremony that would be repeated at the 2002 Olympic Winter Games 73 years later, about 15,000 Utahns celebrated as a natural gas flame was ignited on the end of a 75-foot pole.

A lot of gas has moved through the pipeline since then. The company's customer count has grown from about 18,000 in 1929 to about 772,000 today. And the company's retail footprint now extends all the way from Rock Springs, Wyo., to Monticello and St. George.

In the past 75 years, technology has brought a dizzying succession of changes to the lives of Americans. Television, jet planes, computers and cell phones have burst onto the scene. Many other products - and the companies that produced them - have come and gone. Mergers and acquisitions have brought enormous changes to the U.S. business landscape.

In that context, consider what hasn't changed:

- Natural gas is more valued than ever as a source of heat and power.

- The Pipeline of '29 - enlarged and upgraded several times in the past 75 years - remains the backbone of the company's energy-delivery system.

- Southwestern Wyoming and northwestern Colorado continue to produce much of the natural gas used by Questar's retail customers.

- Questar - known 75 years ago as Western Public Service Corp. - remains an independent company with subsidiaries dedicated to finding and producing natural gas, moving it to market and selling it to retail customers at the lowest possible prices.

- In 75 years the company has never experienced a widespread service interruption.

- In 73 of the past 75 years the company has added more customers than it has lost. And the two negative years were in the depths of the Depression.

Although many Utahns think of Questar as the company that delivers natural gas to their homes and sends them bills every month, most of the company's assets are actually "upstream," in pipelines, storage reservoirs and fields where the gas is produced.

Today, through non-utility subsidiaries, Questar owns gas-producing fields as far away as Louisiana and pipelines as far away as California.

In the last five years, shareholders have been watching a prolific producing area about 100 miles north of Green River, Wyo., known as the Pinedale Anticline. Here, Questar is taking a leading role in developing one of the nation's most promising new onshore gas fields with the least possible disruption to wildlife and its habitat.

Will Utah customers still be relying on natural gas 75 years from now? If the past 75 years are any indication, it's not a bad bet to make - though most of us won't be around to collect.

© 2010 Newspaper Agency Corporation, advertising agent for The Salt Lake Tribune and Deseret Morning News.