CHAPTER
4
MORMON SETTLEMENT
"I
front the eye runs down the long bright red line of Echo I n Kanyon, and rests with astonishment upon its novel and curious features, the sublimity of its broken and jagged peaks, divided by dark abysses, and based upon huge piles of disjointed and scattered rock," observed traveler Sir Richard Burton in the summer of I860. 1 This was a dreamscape. It was particularly a dreamscape to the M o r m o n pioneers, who, when they first entered Echo Canyon, were not short on dreams. For them, the wild canyons and rough desert Great Basin landscape, so unfamiliar and fantastic, were a geography of hope. Here, the Mormons believed, they would build nothing less than the Kingdom of God. Therefore, each new wonder they saw evoked poetic images and assumed heightened meaning. This was n o t just land; it was the setting for a great d r a m a ready to unfold. The problem of building new communities was therefore not purely material; in a sense, the Mormons were consciously writing their own spiritual history. Their efforts would be legible upon the land. The series of communities that sprang up like winter wheat 30
