In This Issue

Remains of cellar walls at Smith Wells. Historic Preservation Office photograph, 1981.

The people, places, and events presented in this issue of Utah Historical Quarterly, when removed from their nineteenth-century context, seem as familiar as those featured in today's media. In the first article an army is marching toward a persecuted religious minority Thousands of lives are at risk. Enter Thomas L. Kane, a skilled negotiator who works with both camps to avoid armed conflict.

In the following piece curiosity about the Mormons, promotion of the Salt Lake Temple by the Union Pacific, and the opening of the temple to non-Mormon visitors before its dedication combine to achieve a public relations coup today's image makers might envy As one newspaper observed, the new temple "was worth a trip across the continent" to see. On its one hundredth anniversary it remains a prime Utah tourist attraction.

Next, separate articles examine the lives of two Utah journalists— Charles W. Hemenway and C. C. Goodwin—both of whom became embroiled in the Mormon-gentile conflict The former led a romantic life marked by high adventure and controversy, young love and early death. Equally colorful and controversial, the latter steered the Salt Lake Tribune along an anti-Mormon course until the Woodruff Manifesto of 1890 pushed his thoughts toward accommodation and high political office Though unique, each man easily fits the familiar mold of the journalist as a personality, a newsmaker in his own right.

The final article relates the story of Smith Wells, the major stagecoach and freighting stop on the Price-Myton road. There, in turn, the Smith, Odekirk, and Hamilton families created an oasis for thousands of teamsters and travelers in a forbidding landscape. These families enjoyed a dynamic, interactive relationship with those they served, the stuff of yarns still told in the Uinta Basin The late twentieth-century equivalent of Smith Wells, the roadside strip mall, seems unlikely to engender tales passed down by several generations; nevertheless, in time it too will become fodder for historians