Im in the New York Times
By MATT JENKINS
Published: July 24, 2009
Published: July 24, 2009
SALT LAKE CITY — On a sunny afternoon in May living history season kicked off at This Is the Place Heritage Park on Salt Lake City’s eastern edge. In one corner of the park Joel Newton, a mountain man hobbyist who looked a little like a buckskin-robed version of Obi-Wan Kenobi, offered impromptu lessons in tomahawk throwing. He kept a watchful eye as a young boy picked up a hatchet, took aim at a nine of hearts nailed to a stump, and — clank! — sent the tomahawk bouncing off the top of the target.
“He’s a flinger,” Mr. Newton growled.
Then a teenage girl dressed head to toe in black hefted a tomahawk and stepped into her throw with absolute assuredness. Her hatchet sailed into the target with a resounding “thwock.”
“Now that,” Mr. Newton declared, “is authoritative.”
Despite its temporary invasion by mountain men (two more were wandering around and sticking up trains at gunpoint), the park, Utah’s version of Colonial Williamsburg, commemorates the pioneer history of the Mormons. Chased out of Nauvoo, Ill., by vigilantes and fired with a vision of a divine kingdom on earth, Brigham Young and 147 members of his Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints endured a 1,300-mile, canvas-topped, hardtack-fueled, cholera-racked test of faith to reach the Wasatch Front in 1847.
Today, the wagon ruts of the Mormon Trail, followed by Young’s party and 70,000 church members who came in the next two decades, have largely been obliterated by sprawl and the ravages of time. But with a little pluck it is possible to see much of the final leg of the journey by car and on foot. A dedicated band of trail enthusiasts, along with the National Park Service, have produced a handful of maps and guidebooks and are working to preserve at least a sense of the importance of the trail.
“Without the story,” said Ron Andersen, the president of the Mormon Trails Association, “it’s just prime real estate.”
Fort Bridger, Wyo., lies 116 miles east of Salt Lake City. It was the point where the migrating Mormons would gather provisions before the final push into the what they believed was the Kingdom of Zion. For 361 days a year Fort Bridger — now a reconstructed version of the original — is a pretty quiet place. A modest museum houses enough antique rifles to arm a small insurgency, as well as an exhibit of historic barbed wire that includes Champion Zig-Zag, a fearsome design that looks as if it could stop a runaway Conestoga wagon.
But every Labor Day weekend things get considerably noisier. Mountain man enthusiasts descend for the Fort Bridger Rendezvous, a re-creation of the annual jamboree when trappers would return from far-ranging expeditions to sell furs and let down their greasy hair.
Many Rendezvous activities, like demonstrations of leather tanning and mountain man cooking, seem motivated by a genuine educational impulse. But the organizers are not above appealing to humanity’s baser instincts. One of the biggest draws is outside the town limits, where an impromptu corps of artillery men gather to take turns unleashing period-accurate (though not necessarily precision-aimed) cannon fire at a hill with a giant bull’s-eye painted on it.
Immediately west of Fort Bridger much of the trail crosses private property and is off limits to casual visitors. But a quick 68-mile car trip on Interstate 80 leads through the town of Evanston and across the Utah line to Echo Canyon, where the trail is once again accessible. Among the cliffs that hem the Interstate are breastworks built in anticipation of a war that didn’t happen. In 1857 President James Buchanan, concerned about the theological zeal with which Brigham Young was running Utah Territory, dispatched the Army to rein him in. The battle was never joined, but markers point out remains of Mormon fortifications.
Five miles north is the town of Henefer, and from here State Route 65 heads west toward a rise called the Hogsback. Though the spot offers lovely views of the Wasatch Mountains, pioneers frequently referred to it as Heartbreak Ridge. Salt Lake City is still 30 miles away, and the only way forward was the 7,400-foot pass on Big Mountain. It was a prospect that could make a Saint say mighty unsaintly things, which Mr. Andersen, the trails association president, delicately paraphrased as: “Oh, shoot. We’ve got to climb that?”
Ahead, a 3.1-mile side trip over a good gravel road leads up East Canyon to Mormon Flat. Remnants of another fortification cling to the top of a low bluff, alongside a creek that tumbles down through the cottonwood, pine and aspen groves. A 4.3-mile hiking path follows the Mormon Trail’s original route up the creek to Big Mountain Pass, a 1,400-foot ascent. In places the pioneers harnessed together their oxen to drag the wagons, one at a time, up the mountain.
The summit brings you face to face with the Wasatch peaks, the Salt Lake Valley and the Oquirrh Range. From here the route to Zion skirts Little Dell Reservoir before winding into Emigration Canyon. Finally it arrives at the edge of the Salt Lake Valley, and This Is the Place Heritage Park.
Living history season at the park, when re-enactors inhabit a spit-shined facsimile of frontier Utah that is practically a stone’s throw from the high-rise towers downtown, runs from mid-May through September. In the Cedar City tithing office two girls stand ready to accept the suggested 10 percent from the 19th-century faithful, while nearby a schoolmistress explains the Deseret Alphabet, Brigham Young’s stab at enlightened lexicography that has since passed into extreme obscurity.
Many of the buildings are the original structures, moved from locations around the state, while others are reproductions (some slightly scaled down).
Not far from a replica of the Deseret News print shop Joel Newton, the mountain man, sat on a wood stool, considering questions of architectural authenticity. He leaned back and squinted at the downtown skyline. “The only thing that’s in the wrong place,” he pronounced, “is those modern buildings over there.”
“He’s a flinger,” Mr. Newton growled.
Then a teenage girl dressed head to toe in black hefted a tomahawk and stepped into her throw with absolute assuredness. Her hatchet sailed into the target with a resounding “thwock.”
“Now that,” Mr. Newton declared, “is authoritative.”
Despite its temporary invasion by mountain men (two more were wandering around and sticking up trains at gunpoint), the park, Utah’s version of Colonial Williamsburg, commemorates the pioneer history of the Mormons. Chased out of Nauvoo, Ill., by vigilantes and fired with a vision of a divine kingdom on earth, Brigham Young and 147 members of his Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints endured a 1,300-mile, canvas-topped, hardtack-fueled, cholera-racked test of faith to reach the Wasatch Front in 1847.
Today, the wagon ruts of the Mormon Trail, followed by Young’s party and 70,000 church members who came in the next two decades, have largely been obliterated by sprawl and the ravages of time. But with a little pluck it is possible to see much of the final leg of the journey by car and on foot. A dedicated band of trail enthusiasts, along with the National Park Service, have produced a handful of maps and guidebooks and are working to preserve at least a sense of the importance of the trail.
“Without the story,” said Ron Andersen, the president of the Mormon Trails Association, “it’s just prime real estate.”
Fort Bridger, Wyo., lies 116 miles east of Salt Lake City. It was the point where the migrating Mormons would gather provisions before the final push into the what they believed was the Kingdom of Zion. For 361 days a year Fort Bridger — now a reconstructed version of the original — is a pretty quiet place. A modest museum houses enough antique rifles to arm a small insurgency, as well as an exhibit of historic barbed wire that includes Champion Zig-Zag, a fearsome design that looks as if it could stop a runaway Conestoga wagon.
But every Labor Day weekend things get considerably noisier. Mountain man enthusiasts descend for the Fort Bridger Rendezvous, a re-creation of the annual jamboree when trappers would return from far-ranging expeditions to sell furs and let down their greasy hair.
Many Rendezvous activities, like demonstrations of leather tanning and mountain man cooking, seem motivated by a genuine educational impulse. But the organizers are not above appealing to humanity’s baser instincts. One of the biggest draws is outside the town limits, where an impromptu corps of artillery men gather to take turns unleashing period-accurate (though not necessarily precision-aimed) cannon fire at a hill with a giant bull’s-eye painted on it.
Immediately west of Fort Bridger much of the trail crosses private property and is off limits to casual visitors. But a quick 68-mile car trip on Interstate 80 leads through the town of Evanston and across the Utah line to Echo Canyon, where the trail is once again accessible. Among the cliffs that hem the Interstate are breastworks built in anticipation of a war that didn’t happen. In 1857 President James Buchanan, concerned about the theological zeal with which Brigham Young was running Utah Territory, dispatched the Army to rein him in. The battle was never joined, but markers point out remains of Mormon fortifications.
Five miles north is the town of Henefer, and from here State Route 65 heads west toward a rise called the Hogsback. Though the spot offers lovely views of the Wasatch Mountains, pioneers frequently referred to it as Heartbreak Ridge. Salt Lake City is still 30 miles away, and the only way forward was the 7,400-foot pass on Big Mountain. It was a prospect that could make a Saint say mighty unsaintly things, which Mr. Andersen, the trails association president, delicately paraphrased as: “Oh, shoot. We’ve got to climb that?”
Ahead, a 3.1-mile side trip over a good gravel road leads up East Canyon to Mormon Flat. Remnants of another fortification cling to the top of a low bluff, alongside a creek that tumbles down through the cottonwood, pine and aspen groves. A 4.3-mile hiking path follows the Mormon Trail’s original route up the creek to Big Mountain Pass, a 1,400-foot ascent. In places the pioneers harnessed together their oxen to drag the wagons, one at a time, up the mountain.
The summit brings you face to face with the Wasatch peaks, the Salt Lake Valley and the Oquirrh Range. From here the route to Zion skirts Little Dell Reservoir before winding into Emigration Canyon. Finally it arrives at the edge of the Salt Lake Valley, and This Is the Place Heritage Park.
Living history season at the park, when re-enactors inhabit a spit-shined facsimile of frontier Utah that is practically a stone’s throw from the high-rise towers downtown, runs from mid-May through September. In the Cedar City tithing office two girls stand ready to accept the suggested 10 percent from the 19th-century faithful, while nearby a schoolmistress explains the Deseret Alphabet, Brigham Young’s stab at enlightened lexicography that has since passed into extreme obscurity.
Many of the buildings are the original structures, moved from locations around the state, while others are reproductions (some slightly scaled down).
Not far from a replica of the Deseret News print shop Joel Newton, the mountain man, sat on a wood stool, considering questions of architectural authenticity. He leaned back and squinted at the downtown skyline. “The only thing that’s in the wrong place,” he pronounced, “is those modern buildings over there.”
4 comments:
Im the one in the Blue and white
You don't look like you're very good at that game...maybe you should have tried the axe throw instead.
That was one of the first time's I tryed playing that game and now Im an expert, I could kick your hiney at any place or time
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