Time Immemorial -- Megafauna and Ancient Puebloans
Long before man roamed the desert area now called Utah, mega-fauna (big critters) lived there. Some of these were bison, mammoths, ROUSes (Rodents Of Unusual Size), and giant ground sloths (as opposed to giant air sloths, which fly so slowly that they tend to stall and crash to earth in an ungainly fashion).
Besides that, there were dinosaurs, like this fella:
Later, after these outsized souls got tired of the desert and moved to Vermont, where it's nice and green, some people known as the Ancient Puebloans moved in. They are related to the Ancient Mariner, but they are landlubbers.
Some people call these the Anasazi. They later invited their friends the Shoshone to come stay with them, and they did, in huge numbers.
1821 – No Longer Spaniards
In 1821, after Mexico won its independence from Spain (actually, they took it outright, rather than “winning” it), Utah was no longer part of New Spain, but of Mexico.
Residents of Utah were now Mexicans, and no longer Spaniards. They traded in their metal hats for sombreros, and their Sangria for Margaritas.
1824 -- Jim Bridger Discovers Salt Lake
Mountain man Jim Bridger came to Utah in 1824, mostly out of curiosity and wanderlust, and discovered the Great Salt Lake.
Of course, other people had seen it before (such as the original inhabitants), but he was the first one to really blab it around.
This caused an influx of salt-lovers (cattlemen, potato chip manufacturers, etc.) and in “no time” the place began to be built up as you can see below:
1847 -- Mormons Arrive in Utah, Mexico
In 1847, a gaggle of Mormons arrived in Utah, Mexico. Feeling unwanted in the Ewe-Knighted States after having been invited to leave Missouri and Illinois, Brigham Olde and his people decided to skedaddle clean out of the country and settled in what was then part of Mexico.
Here are some of these as they came into the country:
The Mormons brought black slaves with them, making Utah the only place in the West to carry on the peculiar institution of the south, even though Brigham Olde was a New Yorker.
The Mormons even added to their chattel by purchasing Indian slaves after their arrival.
1848 -- Treaty of Guacamole Fandango
The Mormons were only able to escape from the Ewe-Knighted States for a very brief period, because the year after their arrival, the Treaty of Guacamole Fandango was signed.
This treaty was signed by the Mexicans under duress, in that they had just been whipped in a war with the Ewe-Knighted States and basically had no choice in the matter.
The upshot of their “touching the pen” was that Utah (among other holdings) no longer belonged to Mexico, but rather to the Ewe-Knighted States.
Thus the Mormons traded tortillas for corn dodgers, burritos for sourdough flapjacks, and margaritas and tequila for cider and beer.
The map below shows that it was not just Utah, but also California, Nevada, most of Arizona, and parts of Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico that changed hands at the stroke of the pen:
1849 -- Brigham Olde Spells ‘Desert’ Wrong
After the Mormons, led by Brigham Olde, got settled in Utah and got used to the idea that they were no longer Mexicans, they decided that they wanted to become a State (not just a Territory or “Protectorate”).
Rather than Utah, though, they wanted their place to be called Deseret instead. They felt that this was descriptive. That’s because Olde was an indifferent (read: lousy) orthographer, and thought that “Deseret” was how “Desert” was supposed to be spelled.
The Mormons dreamed big. They wanted their State to include not only all of itself, but parts of neighboring States, too, namely Colorado, California, Wyoming, Idaho, Nevada, Arizona, Oregon, and New Mexico.
They had to get used to disappointment, though. They did not get to name their State after its salient characteristic (albeit misspelled), nor were they allowed to hog parts of other States situated round about them:
1850 -- Territoryhood
It wasn’t until 1850 that Utah became a Territory. In a gesture of fawning sycophancy, the residents first named their capital city Fillmore, for the then-president of the Ewe-Knighted States Millyard Fillmore.
That didn’t last long, though -- they changed the name of the capital in 1856, after getting their fill of Fillmore. No more Fillmore. After all, as of 1853, Millyard was no longer president.
This time, they didn’t name the capital after the president. Rather than being called Pierce, they named the new seat of Territorial government Salt Lake City.
1854 – Polygamy Unveiled
Already not on the best of terms, when the polygamy practiced by some Mormons became known, this caused a further straining and cooling in the relationship between them and the federal government, slow-tracking Utah’s bid for Statehood.
1857 -- Mountain Meadows Massacre
In 1857, a bunch of morons attacked Mountain Meadows. Who would attack a meadow? Why?!? Who would attack a Mountain? Again: Why?!?
But they did, by using hydraulic mining techniques to level the mountain, and spraying roundup to get rid of the pesky flowers in the meadow. The perpetrators of this outrage were deemed “morons” because the mountain eventually avalanched, and many of them were crushed under boulders and impaled by hurtling tree branches. Those that survived, who were spraying Roundup at the far end of the meadow, slowly died from the self-inflicted chemical exposure.
These morons tried to shift the blame for their heinous act to Greenpeace by wearing Greenpeace pajamas (emblazoned with the Greenpeace logo, with a few “Earth First!” stickers attached), but their ever-present white dress shirts -- “biled” (boiled), to boot -- made them a dead giveaway as local morons, not Greenpeacers or Earth Firsters.
Violence leads only to more violence, so after they tore the mountain down and caused more scars upon the land by also attacking the meadow, they, in a frenzied huff and tizzy, turned on each other:
“I sprayed the most Roundup!” “No, I did!” “Take that!”
1869 -- The Striking of the Spike
The Transcontinental Railroad was completed in 1869 at Promontory Summit, in Utah. Joining Omaha, Nebraska in the east to Sacramento, California in the west, a grand ceremony and celebration was planned for the location where the two opposite-moving teams of gandy dancers finally met in the middle.
A mostly Irish crew was working westward. A predominantly Chinese crew was working eastward. The ceremony was delayed due to a strike on the part of the Irishmen, who had not been paid for quite some time. They were carrying one of the dignataries in a car coming from the east and held him “hostage” so to speak until they got the wages which were in arrears.
Terms were soon reached (the railroad forked over the dough), and the train continued westward. Once everyone was on hand, though, at Promontory Point, the bigwig (railroad official) who was to drive in the final spike, a real but symbolic golden one (to be removed after being driven in), was unable to hit the spike, not being accustomed to manual labor.
Finally, a crew member stepped up and took over the duties, driving the spike home.
A newspaper boy on the scene of the circumstance of pomp later drew his impressions of the scene by memory:
1908 -- Butch Cassidy Killed
Along with Harry Longabaugh (“The Sundance Kid”), Butch Cassidy apparently died in a shootout in Bolivia in 1908. Of course, there are rumors (“conspiracy theories”) that he’s still alive, working as a taxi driver in Paris and such, but … you know the name of that tune.
As was Philo T. Farnsworth, the inventor of the television, Butch Cassidy (Robert Leroy Parker) was born in Beaver, Utah. Parker/Cassidy was born there in 1866, Farnsworth in 1906.
Butch, along with his partners in crime, is shown below:
Top row, left to right: Will Carver and Kid Curry
Bottom row, left to right: Harry Longabaugh (The Sundance Kid), Ben Kilpatrick, and Butch Cassidy
1912 -- “Riders of the Purple Haze”
Zane Grey’s Riders of the Purple Haze, published in 1912, has been called “the most popular psychedelic western novel of all time.”
Mention of it belongs in this comprehensive tome on all things Utah because it deals with Mormons in Utah. In it, a leader of the church, Jethro Tull, wants to marry the protagonist, Reeseycup Witherspoon. Witherspoon doesn’t want to marry the polygamous Tull, and runs away to Shangri-La, where she lives happily ever after with a Jack Mormon named Seldom Seen Smith.
Here’s Reeseycup and Seldom Seen as they declare their undying love for one another:
“I kind of like you, Reeseycup.” “I kind of like you, too, Seldom Seen.” “Groovy!” “Far out!”
1919 -- Zion
Zion was named a National Park (meaning people had to pay to get in) in 1919.
Boreal Toads and Gila Monsters could still get in free.
Here’s the “come on” that Darren Stevens came up with to try to get people to visit the park and buy ice cream and t-shirts there:
1979 -- “The Executioner's Song” Book
Norman Mailer wrote The Executioner's Song in 1979. It’s a pretty good song, but for some reason he released it as a book. How can you read a song?
Showing how clueless the “experts” are, Mailer won a Pulitzer Prize for the thing.
The ballad is about the time the Gilmore Girls took a road trip to Utah and tried to get away with not paying for gas when they topped off their tank in Spanish Fork.
Much ado about nothing, if you ask me.
2012 -- Mormon Church Apologizes for Baptism by Proxy
In 2012, the Mormon church apologized for baptizing Paul Simon’s last canister of Kodachrome film by proxy, ruining it.
Paul sued the Mormons for 42 millions of dollars, because the canister had an original Ansel Adams photo of Zion National Park, as well as images of the Loch Ness Monster, Anastasia, D.B. Cooper, and the city of Atlantis, not to mention Shangri-La and Xanadu.
Here is the Ansel Adams photo (I can’t tell you how I got ahold of it without “blowing my cover”):
Court of the Patriarchs
And here is Nessie her own self:
“Dang! This water is too dang salty! Dang! Get me back to Scotland! Dang!”
. . .
Each Saturday and Tuesday an excerpt of one State’s (satirized) history will be posted here, in alphabetical order (from Alabama to Wyoming).
For “the rest of the story,” the (32-page) complete book “The New All-too-True-Blue History of Utah” is available here.
The regions of the U.S. have been combined into volumes, too; Utah is included in the volume The New All-too-True-Blue History of the American West:
You can listen to this excerpt here.
Blackbird Crow Raven is also the author of the book “the Zany Time Travels of Warble McGorkle”