Services
- Used Books
- Rare Books
- Western Americana
- Maps and Ephemera
- Art and Photographs
Ken Sanders is the proprietor of Ken Sanders Rare Books in Salt Lake City. He has been buying, selling, and collecting books since childhood. He was a partner in the Cosmic Aeroplane and created Cosmic Aeroplane Books in 1975. He founded Dream Garden Press, the shop’s in-house press, in 1980. Ken Sanders Rare Books opened as a full-service antiquarian shop in 1997.
The shop is at 209 East 500 South, inside the old library building at Library Square, the former Leonardo Museum. Three levels: Main Floor, Rare Room in the basement, and Underground in the sub-basement. About 4,000 square feet. More than 100,000 books.
Stock is used and rare, a handful of new, plus art, ephemera, maps, photographs, and postcards. Specialties are Utah and the Mormons and Western Americana: Grand Canyon, Colorado River, Yellowstone and other national parks, and the literary West, including Edward Abbey, Wallace Stegner, B. Traven, and Terry Tempest Williams.
Serious collectors and casual browsers are both invited. A lot of the stock is uncatalogued, so you have to walk the shelves. Hours are Tuesday through Sunday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Ken is an ABAA member and served on its Board of Governors as Security Chair. He has hosted the city’s largest poetry reading. He has appeared on Antiques Roadshow and in the Netflix series Murder Among the Mormons. The shop moved into the Leonardo in September 2023 after 26 years in the earlier downtown building.