Salt Lake City through a German's Eyes: A Visit by Theodor Kirchhoff in 1867

Utah Historical Quarterly

Vol. 51, 1983, No. 1

Salt Lake City through a German's Eyes: A Visit by Theodor Kirchhoff in 1867

EDITED AND TRANSLATED BY FREDERIC TRAUTMANN

THEODOR KIRCHHOFF (1828-99) was a German whose desire for adventure was exceeded only by his love of America. He fought as a lieutenant in every major battle of the Revolution of 1848, then sailed to America in 1851. He played the piano in St. Louis and washed dishes in Davenport. He was a postmaster, a bookkeeper, a paperhanger, a photographer, and an innkeeper while traveling as much as possible. In 1854 he followed the Mississippi from Minnesota to Louisiana. In 1863 he began writing about his travels. By 1869, having been to New York, Panama, California, Oregon, Idaho, and nearly everywhere in between, he had seen a lot but thought he had written about it far too little. He settled in San Francisco, started a profitable jewelry and optical business, and was soon able to devote himself to writing about travel in poems, essays, newspaper articles, and books.

He wrote in German but about America, whose language, geography, and culture he had learned better than most native-born Americans learn them. America was home to him: he was happy nowhere else after he had seen America; he returned to Germany once, thinking he might stay, but soon came back to America, home. His works were widely reviewed and widely read in America and Europe. To German readers in both places he introduced and made familiar the Great Plains, the Rocky Mountains, the gold fields, Mammoth Cave, Salt Lake City, and other exotic places. He was eyes and ears, and perhaps the impetus to travel, to two generations on two continents. Today, thanks to him, we can know what a visit to Salt Lake City was like to a professional tourist, an experie-nced traveler, and a practiced travel writer. Below is his account, in translation, of his two-day stay in May of 1867.

The morning sun of May 8, 1867, shone clear and golden through the windows of my bedroom in the city of the "saints" and woke me after a short but refreshing sleep. I soon made my toilet. After an excellent breakfast I took up my alpenstock (I never travel without that Swiss companion) and strolled into the sun-swept streets of this New Jerusalem.

Indeed, the Latter Day Saints have a charming place here on the banks of the Great Salt Lake, a true oasis in the endless alkali desert! My first walk through wide and clean streets was enough to make me an admirer of this city. Rows of green acacias and Canadian poplars alternated in shading the 20-foot-wide sidewalk. Running water murmured beside it. Pleasant private homes stood among flowers and orchards. In every direction countless peach trees, in full bloom, spread a reddish resplendence that was agreeably varied by blossoms — in white and other colors — of many cherry, apple, pear, and other fruit trees. Above the city of flowers the sky was an azure dome supported, so to speak, by shining, snow-capped peaks of the handsome Wasatch Range. After the dreadful trek over prairie and desert, this idyllic city looked to me like an enchanting paradise. The houses, mostly of adobe, were almost all painted in bright colors. The gardens were enclosed with high walls of mortared fieldstone, above which those fruit trees rose in that full-bloom splendor. On East Temple Street, 132-feet wide and the city's main thoroughfare, the buildings had a look of municipal elegance.

At the north end of the street I saw to the left a high fieldstone wall and, above it, a large roof that resembled the back of a giant turtle: the roof of the world-famous Mormon Tabernacle. I went unhindered through an open gate to a construction site, to get a better look at the strange building. One of the workers, a Norwegian whom I met at the little overseer's shack by the gate, offered to be my guide. With thanks I accepted this friendly offer.

Near us on the spacious grounds was the foundation for tomorrow's grand Mormon Temple. Huge blocks of hewn granite, here in profusion, clearly proved Mormon earnestness about erecting the magnificent church that I saw in blueprint in the overseer's shack. Plans call for a length of I86V2 feet; width of 99; six spires, each 225 feet high and solid granite; in a mixture of old and new styles, with that of Queen Elizabeth's time predominating. Still, whether the Mormons would be able to finish such a massive work seemed to me very problematical.

Behind the embryo-temple was the new Tabernacle, done but for the front, which was still open, and the interior decoration. The Tabernacle is all wood, except the forty-six square pillars of red sandstone, each sixteen feet high and four feet thick. They support the steeply sloped roof, which projects out like a verandah. The Tabernacle is 250 feet long, 150 wide, and 80 high, with two flagpoles that rise another 65. This structure, seating 12,000, is definitely not beautiful; and the peculiar roof, without prototype (to my knowledge) among any architecture in the world, has anything but a classical shape. However, by virtue of construction, acoustics are extraordinary: a word whispered on the rostrum is audible anywhere in the large auditorium. The colossal organ cost $70,000. Thanks to my guide I was allowed on the holy turtle-roof. From its height I enjoyed a magnificent view of the city, spread out below me like a flower garden.

On both Temple and Tabernacle only Mormons are employed as workmen. They take their pay mostly in produce. Large sums are being collected, chiefly in England, for the building of the Temple; but Brigham Young, an exceptionally good manager, looks out for his own interests and keeps the cash. He pays construction workers — masons, stonecutters, etc. — the equivalent in carrots, potatoes, flour, bacon, goats, and chickens, of which he always has a big supply, as they come to him in tithes.

Beside the new Tabernacle was the old one. It looked like a big barn and for a long time had not met the needs of the rapidly growing Mormon community. In the summer, religious services are held in the so-called Bowery, a place furnished with rows of wooden benches and roofed with wooden lattice that, to give protection from the sun, supports green shrubs and vines. The Bowery and the old Tabernacle each seat 3,000. Nearby is the Endowment House, where priests are ordained and marriages performed.

After the Tabernacle the thing most worth a visitor's seeing is the seat of the "president," as the Mormons usually call Brigham Young. His residence, called the Prophet's Block, on East Temple Street diagonally across from the Tabernacle, comprises about twenty acres enclosed by a fortress-like wall twelve feet high. The main entrance is at the south side through Eagle Gate, which takes its name from a large eagle carved in stone and spreading its wings over a beehive, the Mormon coat of arms. In the square enclosed by the wall are orchards, vineyards, and vegetable gardens, as well as various buildings, such as the tithing office and the two-story Deseret store, where there is a print shop. Scattered about are also a number of workshops for craftsmen — shoemakers, joiners, smiths, etc. — and other small buildings where the president's workers live. And there are some herds of animals: Mormon tithes temporarily kept here until Brigham Young transfers them to islands in the Great Salt Lake "for the church" (i.e., for his personal fortune!).

One of the most imposing structures in Prophet's Block stands beside Eagle Gate: the Beehive House, so called because a number of representations of beehives are displayed on it. The honeybee (called Deseret in the Mormon dictionary) is the symbol of the Latter Day Saints, and this building was erected in its honor. Mormons always call Utah "Deseret" (land of the honeybee), and the "State of Deseret" is their official Canaan. Yet I have seldom seen bees in Utah Territory. The Beehive House is two stories of adobe, from the outside an elegant structure covered with white plaster. It is supposed to have cost $65,000. On the roof is an observatory in the shape of a beehive. Mary Ann Angell, Brigham Young's first wife, once lived here. Later she had to make way for the lovely Amelia [Folsom], who is now queen bee among Brigham's several lesser wives.

Other buildings worth mentioning in Prophet's Block: the schoolhouse where the prophet's children, some fifty, are educated; the library; and a white edifice called, like the President's home in Washington, the White House. In it lives Mrs. Young Number One, the prophet's first legitimate wife.

The visitor's attention is drawn, among all buildings in Prophet's Block, most to Brigham Young's own house. A stone lion, certainly not sculpted by Thorvaldsen, stands at the door and gives the building its name: the Lion House — though better known as the Harem. It is of wood, long, and of two stories plus a basement. On the front is a row of bay windows, each marking (according to what people say) the apartment of a wife of the prophet. Nobody knows the exact number of the prophet's wives, except perhaps the prophet himself. In spite of my most zealous inquiries about his family life, I learned nothing certain about that interesting statistic. Guesses ranged from eighteen to sixty-seven. Since the U.S. Congress passed the law against polygamy in the territories, Mormons keep the number of their wives secret. Although the grand jury in Salt Lake City has been required, under oath sworn before Federal judges, to assemble evidence of polygamy in Utah, the evidence has not been assembled. Nobody doubts widespread polygamy here, but President Young's power and influence are enough to practically nullify efforts of the United States government.

The inside of the Harem remained terra incognita for me, unfortunately. I had to be satisfied with looking at the prophet's home from the outside and imagining its elegant interior. Now and then I moved slightly one of the white gardenias along the row of bay windows and perhaps brought the critical gaze of one of the Mesdames Young, through a curtain, at the impudent Gentile slipping suspiciously past the house of the prophet. (All people of other persuasions, whether Jew, Christian, or pagan, are called Gentile.) All sorts of lies are told about the Harem: secret passages, double walls, treasure vaults, and (one I hold to be sheer calumny) secret rooms where refractory wives are disciplined by the hand of the prophet himself.

Brigham Young's office communicates directly with the Lion House. In the office he receives visitors and does his daily business. It's easy to meet him; he is in no way hostile to strangers. Unfortunately I did not meet him. When I was there, he was on a tour of the Territory.

Reliable sources told me that the Young family's domestic life is not at all what might be expected in a harem. When friends of the president come to visit, there is seldom any woman in the parlor but one of his three favorites: Emeline, Lucy, or Clara. The tone of the gathering is nothing but polite. When there are no visitors, the women busy themselves with various domestic tasks. The house is organized like a boarding house for single women, except that here the women are all married. Each Mrs. Young has her own attractive room or a private apartment where she is sovereign. The entire family, large and small, assemble to pray and eat. The keys to the house, and supervision of kitchen and cellar, rotate among wives. The house has sewing machines, spinning wheels, dyeing tubs, etc., to be used by each wife as she wishes. Private instruction in music, dancing, and French is provided. Often there is great merrymaking, for Brigham Young is anything but a sobersides. Amateur theater fills many an idle hour, and those wives good at acting sometimes take parts in the municipal theater of Salt Lake City. Some of the wives are even poets. Among them, Eliza Snow has distinguished herself as author of inspired hymns.

I used as best I could my short time in Great Salt Lake City to familiarize myself with it and environs. It is usually called simply Salt Lake City or, by the Mormons, Zion or New Jerusalem. ... In the spring the shining peaks of the Wasatch and Oquirrh Mountains, which enclose the city and its green valley, are snow-covered and majestically beautiful. Snow disappears entirely from the mountains in summer, except the highest peaks. The city's outward appearance is about the same in every part. Streets are very wide. Water runs next to sidewalks shaded with rows of green trees. Most houses have orchards around them. The population was estimated at 15,000 when I visited. Of them, except two or three companies of U.S. troops at Camp Douglas four miles east, Gentiles numbered 400 at most. Mormons and Gentiles were on bad terms then. Brigham "in the name of God" had forbidden believers to have anything to do with "damned Gentiles." Since this prohibition applied mostly to business, it amounted nearly to Gentile expulsion. Consequently, business practically stopped; and gold, silver, and paper money grew very scarce. Poverty was rife among the working class, though someone passing through would scarcely suspect it. I was told that many families went for weeks without meat on the table.

Salt Lake City is Utah's center of trade, serving the Territory's settled part, a stretch 50 miles wide east and west, and 700 long north and south, from Idaho to Arizona. Salt Lake City is also trade center for the surrounding mining region: Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Arizona, and Nevada.

Thanks to Brigham Young's magnificent achievement with irrigation, the Mormon's strip ofland (originally only a miserable alkali desert) has become the region's breadbasket. By all calculations, in time, Salt Lake City shall be the most important city between the Missouri and the Sierra Nevada. Agriculturally, the land of the Mormons is a splendid oasis in the Great American Desert. Many mountain peaks and their slowly melting snows supply energetic Mormons all water needed for irrigation. There is running water here [in the city] all year round. Without adequate water the land would be worthless. Where water fails, dry winds and no rain in summer draw all moisture from the loamy soil and destroy plants. Mountain streams, to be used for irrigation, are "tapped" in their upper reaches and directed by many canals to the fields. Such enterprises, too costly for most individuals, are usually the work of companies or municipal corporations; and the water is equably distributed. Thus is Salt Lake City supplied, and every homeowner can water his garden as needed. As a rule, once a week suffices. By dividing land to be watered in seven parts, and watering one a day, the toil is significantly reduced.

There are comparatively few Germans in Zion. Seeing no German newspaper, I asked a bookseller why, unlike every other city of this size in America, there wasn't one here. He said the Germans here are very pious and little concerned with reading newspapers.

Asa fitting end to my first day in New Jerusalem, I decided to go to the theater in the evening. On the bill were the melodrama The Bride of Lammermoor, with ballet and vocal music, followed by a comedy. Many times I had heard wonderful things about the Mormon Theater: not even the new Berlin Opera could match it. My expectations were at their peak when I entered the lobby and elbowed my way through groups of broadshouldered Mormon lords and their many wives, to the box office. I had been told repeatedly that the prophet, the theater's sole owner, gave the Mormons the privilege of paying in flour, beets, and carrots, but Gentiles must pay in greenbacks. So, having watched closely, I speak from experience: at the box office no carrots were accepted.

I bought a ticket for $1.50 and took a seat in the first balcony. This theater was not as nice as the Berlin Opera but, a little dirt ignored, was very respectable. For general lighting, instead of a chandelier, a row of lamps on the balustrade circled the theater. The auditorium was very simple, with bare benches, as if the prophet wanted to intensify the republican tastes of his followers even in the temple of Thalia. The house was full. Its well-mannered behavior could have served as a model for many an audience in theaters in big eastern cities. The parquet was reserved for Mormons. Gentiles were admitted only to the balconies. Private boxes near the stage were for the highest Mormon priests and the president, as well as their sizeable families. In one box I saw two of Brigham's wives. Their faces and forms were in no way lovely, convincing me that the prophet (as I'd often heard) had little taste in choosing his harem. To me his taste seemed to incline more to sturdy bodies than spirit and charm. Indeed, every woman I saw in the theater had a stupid and ordinary face. I couldn't discover a halfway attractive one among them. One of the boxes was empty for, as I've said, Brigham Young was away on a trip. Two parquet benches were reserved for his children. Beside them, on the center aisle, sat Mama Young Number One. the president's first wife, in a special chair, an imposing matron with a good-natured face. Men and women sat together sociably in the parquet, women and children far outnumbering men, as would be expected. The actors, mostly Mormons, did credit to dramatic art. Some rose above the ordinary in their power of port rayal. The person next to me told me that the leading lady belonged to "the president's family." The sets, painted by Norwegian and Swedish artists, were excellent; and costumes left nothing to be desired. I was shocked, though, that some of the musicians in the orchestra kept their hats on when playing, a democratic custom I could not approve. In short, it took little imagination to transport oneself from Salt Lake City to a theater on the Bowery in New York or the Metropolitan Theater in San Francisco. I had a very agreeable evening. Surrounded by the "elite of the saints" I had plenty of interesting material to study through my opera glasses.

I spent part of my second day diligently studying Mormonism and the institution of polygamy, and part walking in the city and idyllic environs. Toward evening I went to the warm sulphur springs, half an hour north, where excellent baths have been built. Water from the springs, suitably cooled from their 102°, is piped into a roofed pool, around which are simple bathrooms with tubs: exquisite refreshment for residents of Salt Lake City and dust-covered travelers. All day, buses regularly leave the city for the baths.

After a refreshing swim, and before sundown, I climbed nearby Ensign Peak, 400 feet above the city, to get a view of the city and surroundings. From that height the panorama was magnificent. Mormons often come here and gaze over the Great Salt Lake and its shores that were once a desert — they look into the past, so to speak, and compare Now with Then — and it is understandable why they think they are God's chosen. In a few years they have transformed their new homeland from a miserable desert to a luxuriant garden.

Salt Lake City lay spread out at my feet and enclosed by green fields and pastures. With countless peach trees blossoming in bright red, and with white houses partly hidden among them, the picture was that of summerhouses in a colorful rose-garden. And the wide streets, running among the trees in long lines and crossing each other at right angles, looked like the garden's graveled paths. The Tabernacle's roof was strange, rising above the city. I've already compared it to the shell of a primeval turtle. I could also liken it to an ocean liner turned upside down or, even more aptly, to a giant butcher's cauldron, overturned, after use by a Norse god of slaughter to carry a snack of a dozen roasted aurochs to Thor and Freya in Valhalla. To the right of the city the Jordan had overflowed its banks in several places as it wound sinuously through emerald-green fields. To the northwest the glittering salt lake stretched to the horizon. The 7,200-foot peak on Antelope Island was mirrored in the lake, as were other, snow-covered mountains far to the north. Salt Lake City lay in a broad, level area. To the left, green fields, crossed by a network of brimming canals, stretched from the mountains to the Jordan. A few miles away in that direction were white tents of Camp Douglas on a green meadow, keeping watch over the holy city. But most beautiful of all in this panorama were snow-covered mountains that broadly framed the fertile plain. On the left: the Wasatch, whose highest points are the Twin Peaks, 11,600 feet above sea level. On the right: the Oquirrh, lower but also covered with snow, northern foothills running to the lake. Rising 7,000 to 8,000 feet above the lake, the Wasatch looked very Swiss, with jagged, snow-capped peaks jutting powerfully into blue sky. The sun sank in a golden globe into weaves of the lake, and they appeared to glow with joy. The mountains suddenly flamed into full blaze. Nature seemed to be painting in indelible colors a picture on the mind of the visitor, on my mind, a picture of a magnificent desert oasis.

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