Provo, Utah

“ Already a small canal has been constructed and its enlargement may convert the whole prairie into a meadow. Thus the prairie, although part of the drainage basin of the Weber, belongs to the irrigation district of the Provo.
The Provo next follows a narrow rock bound valley for 7 miles, being skirted by bottom lands that admit of some farming. It then enters Provo Valley, an opening about as large as the last, and favored by a warm climate that permits the growth of breadstuffs. Thence to Utah Valley it follows a deep, close cañon. ”

“ The excitement in Washington over the fact that the republican Utah postmasters at Provo and Logan have been all along in the same boat with democratic Roberts is amusing because of the frantic efforts of men to show that they did not know that those men were {160} old polygamists and had been living with their wives since the "manifesto" of 1890. Of course they knew it. No man could have lived in Utah since 1890 without knowing it. ”

“ Provo is also the County Seat of Utah County, gathering to its centre a great amount of county business, at any rate such a portion of it as pertains to keeping of records, which makes it a kind of general place of resort for men from every part of the county, who wish to do business of this kind. ”

“ The Mormons call the City Provo, and Gentiles prefer as a “rile” Timpanogos.
The Utah Lake,UTAH LAKE. another Judean analogue, derives its supplies from the western versant of the Wasach. It is in shape an irregular triangle, the southern arm forming a very acute angle. The extreme length is thirty miles, and the greatest breadth is fifteen. It owes its sweetness, which, however, is by no means remarkable, to its northern drainage, the Piya Ogwap, alias Utah Outlet, alias Jordan River. Near the shores the water soon deepens to fifteen feet ”

“ Governor A. Cumming appointed to Utah Territory after the thankless offer had been refused by sixteen or seventeen political persons; left Camp Scott, near Fort Bridger, and on the 12th of April entered Great Salt Lake City. The “rebellion in Utah” found to be a pure invention.
Mr. Brigham Young, followed by 25,000 souls, marched to Provo, with their stock, flocks, and chattels, even their furniture.
April 15. Governor Cumming officially reported a respectful reception, and the illumination of Echo Kanyon; also that the records of the United States Courts, then in charge of a Mormon, Mr. ”

“ Here in this State the pioneers and those who came after them took not the land that would ordinarily be chosen as land that would yield return with little effort. You took territory which at the outset was called after the desert, and you literally—not figuratively—you literally made the wilderness blossom as the rose. The fundamental element in building up Utah has been the work of the citizens of Utah. ”

“ Some seventeen years ago a small band of Mormons—headed by Brigham Young—commenced in the present thrifty metropolis of Utah. The population of the territory of Utah is over 100,000—chiefly Mormons—and they are increasing at the rate of from five to ten thousand annually. The converts to Mormonism now are almost exclusively confined to English and Germans—Wales and Cornwall have contributed largely to the population of Utah during the last few years. The population of Great Salt Lake City is 20,000.—The streets are eight rods wide—and are neither flagged nor paved. ”

“ The Mormon hegira planted the first of the island settlements in the heart of the desert. The very isolation of Utah gave it prominence. What religious enthusiasm lacked in aiding organization, shrewd leadership and resulting prosperity supplied. The first impulse moving population across the plains had been chiefly conquest, with Oregon as the result. Religion was the next, producing Utah. The lust for gold followed close upon the second, calling into life California, and then in a later decade sprinkling little camps over all the mountain West. ”

“ The effect of this concentrated and regulated labor is told in the stupendous results already hinted—all danger of famine is warded off, and a sufficient store provided for the saints who should obey the bugle-call of their chieftain, bidding them from afar to this land of promise. A chain of settlements is marked out, and cities founded, as stepping-stones to the Pacific coast; a Provisional government is constituted, and Utah distinctly recognised as a territory in the halls of Congress. ”

“ They brag constantly, and largely, about Great Salt Lake City, and surely they have a right to. In the essential points of beauty, comfort, cleanliness, and good order, it has few equals, and perhaps no superiors of its age and size anywhere, and all things considered is indeed a perfect miracle for Utah. In the very heart of the great internal basin of the continent, and the centre of a busy and thriving people, it really seemed to be a natural metropolis there, and was everywhere talked of as the future workshop and mart of that region. ”

“ Colonies and proselytes were brought in from various parts of the world, until two hundred thousand Mormons came to Utah, and after protracted conflicts with the Government, polygamy was declared illegal, and its discontinuance was ordered by proclamation of the Mormon President. Twelve miles from the Great Salt Lake is the Utah capital and Mormon Zion, Salt Lake City, where the Latter-Day Saints and Gentiles together exceed fifty thousand. Its prosperity is largely due to the extensive mining interests of the surrounding country. ”

“ At the western base of the Wasatch are Salt Lake City, Ogden, Provo and other smaller towns, situated where streams issue from the mountains, soon to disappear on the desert plains. In such places agriculture is made possible by irrigation, and the Mormon villages, both here and farther south along the base of the Hurricane Ledge, depend largely on this industry. Important mining operations are carried on in the Wasatch Mountains and in a number of the basin ranges. ”

“ The mind and eye are captivated together. It is a fascination of the imagination as well as of the senses. For the capital of Utah is not one of Nature's favourites. She has hemmed it in with majestic mountains, but they are barren and severe. She has spread the levels of a great lake, but its waters are bitter, Marah. There is none of the tender grace of English landscape, none of the fierce splendour of the tropics; and yet, in spite of Nature, the valley is already beautiful, and in the years to come may be another Palmyra. ”

“ The principal value of Utah Territory is its position as a great half-way station—a Tadmor in the wilderness—between the Valley of the Mississippi and the Western States, California and Oregon; it has thus proved a benefit to humanity. The Mormons, "flying from civilization and Christianity," attempted to isolate themselves from the world in a mountain fastness; they were foiled by an accident far beyond human foresight. ”

“ It is a blessing to breathe the element that is in this place—to behold the unity of the people in trying to bring their wills into subjection to the will of the Lord their God. I am glad we are here, and our enemies where they are. Those of us who, have been here for some ten years cannot realize the great contrast between Utah and the rest of the world. We hardly know how to prize our privileges. Were we placed in any of the large cities of the United States and Europe, we should hardly believe we were in the same world. ”

“ No division of the United States has a better credit in commercial circles than Utah, and this is not due to the peculiar institution of polygamy, but to the perfect system of irrigation. The careful husbanding of the waters that come down the Wahsatch Range on mountains, has transmuted a dreary desert of sand and sage brush into what most travellers regard as a garden, and what possibly to the faithful appears symbolically a Paradise. ”

“ At long last the nation had awakened to the greatness of the gift nature had bestowed upon it, and in future years unnumbered generations will come to marvel at the wonders of the country which is southern Utah and at the austere majesty of the Great White Throne—generations free from the dread and superstition that made primitive races fear its unimagined heights no less than its long shadows and dazzling brilliance in the sun. ”

“ It is fitting that I should here notice one powerful corrective to the natural tendency of polygamy in Utah--the non-Mormon population. It now numbers about 15,000, and includes at least four men to one woman. It is customary to divide the people of Utah into two classes, but it should be three: the Orthodox Saints, the "Hickory Mormons," or Liberals, and Gentiles. The second class consists mostly of the native young Mormons, born in the Church, but almost universally freethinkers; for Mormonism in a family never outlasts one generation. ”

“ We are just beginning to learn that we are all children of one Father and members of one family; and when one member suffers or is benefited, all the members suffer or rejoice. So when Utah comes into the Union with every one free, it is not only that State which is benefited, but we and all the world. As the stars at night come out one by one, so will they come out one by one on our flag, till the whole blue field is a blaze of glory. We expected it of the men of Utah. ”

“ Legislators constantly passing to and from California find Salt Lake City a most attractive stopping-place. The Mormon hierarchy, sly, cunning, astute, to the last limit of human nature, is ever sharply on the lookout for these potent summer visitors. ‘Prophets’ and ‘apostles’ board every train of cars that enters Utah bearing an important traveller. The freedom of the city, the hospitality of the show ‘happy families,’ who are never taken by surprise on an off-day of misery, is lavished upon the ingenuous guest.... ”

“ The only measure which has yet been enacted looking to the cure of the political evil in Utah was the disfranchisement of the polygamists by the Edmunds law of 1882; but although they have been disfranchised and rendered inelegible to office, they are only about 12,000—a very small fraction of the Mormons; and practically the old men, the Mormon leaders, who have controlled the affairs of Utah for thirty years, have simply abdicated in favor of their sons. Consequently the Territory is still under Mormon rule, and the priesthood have it in their iron grasp. ”

“ The Mormon Utah settlement by 1850 had a population of 11,000. The number of converts brought from abroad during the first ten years is put at 17,000, mostly from England. By 1887 the Mormons are said to have brought more than 85,000 of the working classes from England and northern Europe to the Great Basin of the Rocky Mountains.
Brigham Young in 1849 organized his territory as "The Provisional State of Deseret," including [Pg 205] what is now Utah and Nevada, and parts of Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, and California. ”

“ The people of the northern settlements, along the base of the Wahsatch Mountains, including Salt Lake City, were deserting their homes, abandoning houses, crops, and their heavier furniture, and migrating southward. Long wagon-trains were sweeping through the city every day, accompanied by hundreds of families, and droves of horses and cattle. A fair estimate of the entire Mormon population of Utah is about forty-five thousand. ”

“ The foundations are laid with long ceremonies. The fort or block-house is first built, and when the people are lodged the work of agriculture begins. The cities of Utah Territory are somewhat like the “towns” of Cornwall. At present there are three long lines of these juvenile settlements established as caravanserais in the several oases. The first is along the Humboldt River to Carson Valley; the second is by the southern route, viâ Fillmore; and the third is betwixt the two, along “Egan’s Route,” the present mail line. ”

“ Nevada, moreover, lies under the disadvantage of having on one side of it the finest portion of California, on the other the finest portion of Utah, and sandwiched between two such Beauties, such a Beast naturally looks its worst. For the northern angle of Utah is by far the most fertile part of the territory, possessing, in patches, some incomparable meadows, and corn-lands of wondrous fertility. As compared with the prodigious agricultural and pastoral wealth of such states as Missouri, Illinois, or Ohio, the Cache Valleys and Bear Valleys of Utah seem of course insignificant enough ”

“ The difficulty of securing a crop here in this fertile valley with its mild and equable climate, was very small in comparison with the difficulties encountered by the first settlers of New England along the bleak Atlantic shore. Furthermore, what a mercy it would have been to our whole country if Utah had remained unsettled for another twenty-five years, if then it could have been occupied by law-abiding Americans in sympathy with American civilization, such men as have built up the noble states of Colorado, Nebraska and Kansas. ”

“ Out of the 200 saloon, billiard, bowling alley and pool-table keepers not over a dozen even profess to be Mormons. All of the bagnios and other disreputable concerns in the territory are run and sustained by non-Mormons. Ninety-eight per cent of the gamblers in Utah are of the same element. Ninety-five per cent of the Utah lawyers are Gentiles, and 98 per cent of all the litigation there is of outside growth and promotion. ”