Mormon Pioneers

Salt Lake City Temple

An immense melon moon rose in Utah. We arrived late and in suffocating heat to begin a month in the American West. Distant purple mountains--the Wasatch Range--beckoned, but our first task was to discover the pioneers who came here first, the Mormons. A hidden sun beamed up pearly cirrhus strips.  

In Salt Lake City's wealthy and immaculate center a light rail carries you past perfectly restored turn of the century urban architecture to Temple Square, center of the Mormon empire.

The Mormon pioneers who settled this land strove, like all pioneers, against terrible odds. In 1847 Brigham Young (Joseph Smith had by then been meted out frontier justice) struck his staff in the unprepossessing flat and barren land (occupied seasonally by Shoshone, Ute and Paiute Indians) and declared the city of his visions.  It was surveyed out, and the pioneers began to construct the Mormon empire, far beyond the troublesome United States that had persecuted them. Today there are as many Mormons as Jews worldwide (about 13 million), and Salt Lake City has been, over the years, a wealthy crossroads of the West.

Spotless and tightly controlled, Temple Square's message is delivered relentlessly by young girls from all over the world who pop up everywhere in their modest dress, serving as missionaries (just as Mitt Romney did in France). The message is that the true scripture is found in the Book of Mormon, taken by its adherents on a leap of faith despite the obvious discrepancies with scientific knowledge. (For example, the modern horse mentioned many times in the BOM was not on the American continent between 200 BC and 400 AD.) It is drilled into you by elderly men, self-satisfied and friendly. On large screens with high production values giant colorful people enact the Mormon story, or testify to their living faith. There's a lot of money being devoted to telling this tale.

Where are the young men, or the older women? Some of them are in the Family History Library, the huge repository of genealogy that enables the Mormons to convert the dead along with the living. It is purported to be the Mormon's offering to you, so that you can discover the joy in connecting to your long lost ancestors.

Joseph Smith

The Conference Center is the largest in the world, its four-acre roof planted with a meadow. And everywhere giant wide-eyed colonial figures tell stories of religious persecution and life-saving faith, of the wonders the Mormons have built. Pioneer spirit shows in the 1882 Assembly Hall, and the home of Brigham Young, Salt Lake City's colonizer. The majestic Utah Hotel with its Florentine Renaissance ceilings and its marble staircases, was bought by the Mormons, and there a powerful documentary presents the story of Joseph Smith, pioneer and prophet.

What the documentary does not cover are some details about Joseph Smith, now being explored by a blog called Mormonthink. His more than 30 wives (nowhere on Temple Square is polygamy discussed) were in some cases already married to other men. He apparently propositioned many other women, blackmailing them into sleeping with him. Nor is there any mention on Temple Square of the Mountain Meadows Massacre of 1857, where non-Mormon pioneers were promised safe conduct and then murdered. An airtight pomposity on Temple Square raises many questions and exhausts the questioner with its obstinent silence.

On the other hand, it's the presence of Mormons in Utah and southeastern Idaho which contribute to an arresting brand of courtesy and cleanliness.

Bear Lake

On a more interesting level, it's easy to see how Tony Kushner arrived at the link with the gay culture in Angels in America. The museum has many large format paintings of Smith manning up--the one powerful beautiful man, glowing in light before handsome, naked Indians.

Other Salt Lakers are fun, friendly, willing to please, chatty--Spanish and British accents, Chinese spoken, some denizens are tattooed and costumed, others are debutante blondes. Public spaces are large and perfect, and the old turn of the century commercial buildings exquisitely restored. The ambience is not unlike New Mexico or Colorado, common sense threaded with serious outoor people and with Native Americans. And the seamless mass transit system is free.

Driving out of Salt Lake City toward Idaho, billboards read:

Wax on the cars, not in the ears! We hear you!

100% breast augmentation! How cool is that?

Mineral composition at Honeyville Hot Springs

The Wasatch mountains beckoned from the background, in a mist of dust and the smoke of nearby forest fires. It is easy to see how the Mormon pioneers were bound to their charismatic leaders by the majesty of these ranges. In the foreground:

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Paris Tabernacle

As we left Salt Lake City the land unfolded majestically. The Wasatch ranges waited in repose, sleeping beasts, tawny and green. America's immense lands of sage, pine, sycamore, gambrel oak. We stopped for temples and tabernacles and then a hot springs in Honeyville, family pools of concentrated mineral waters under the blue sky and Wasatch mountains, where Spanish and Russian were spoken.

We drove through beautiful Logan Canyon and Cache Valley, where natural stone grew high like ancient columns of mythical giants on the sides of our passage, then young tender trees reached across the road nearly joining hands.

Inside the Paris Tabernacle

Between 10,000 and 16,000 years ago, camels grazed in thick grass here, giant mammoths lumbered, herds of bison and horses roamed and grizzly and short-faced bears hunted. Bones and tusks and remains of such ancient giants have been found in Cache Valley.

The Canyon brought relief from the 95 degree heat, as it had for the trappers and pioneers. From a windy overlook we saw turquoise Bear Lake. We drove along Bear Lake into Idaho, where suddenly everything seemed a bit more free. Farmsteads and livestock seemed more relaxed on ranging pastures, by dilapidated old wool sheds and barns.

His grandfather's carved doors

In Paris, Idaho we found a quite beautifully proportioned Tabernacle in roseate stone. Mormon converts from Switzerland had brought elaborate skills in stone and wood for such hardy pioneers. Our fat bellied affable guide chuckled us through the Tabernacle, where his grandfather had carved the entrance doors. He told us of the laborious building of the Tabernacle, whose stones had been hauled 18 miles over the winter ice of Bear Lake. Each post of each banister was carved by hand. A shipmaker made the wood ceiling like an inverted boat. All this at the command of Brigham Young and in witness of God's glory. These people surrendered fully to the patriarchal will.

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In Montpelier, where the population explodes to 2,000, is a bank which Butch Cassidy robbed in 1896. But Main St. seems worn away to nothing. Perhaps that's Idaho.