In This Issue

One hundred fifty years ago the nation was already a year into a bitter civil war. The Union and the Confederacy contended on the battlefields of Fredericksburg, Shiloh, Antietam, and lesser known locations in a violent attempt to solve the longstanding issues of slavery, state rights, and secession. That civil war, and encounters before and since, remind us that opposing points of view, debate, a good measure of respect, and compromise are essential to the survival of a vibrant democracy, the preservation of individual rights, and the promotion of the welfare of all citizens. For many Americans, the 1860 election of the first Republican president, Abraham Lincoln, assured the secession of a group of states whose citizens feared his election meant an all-out attack on the moral and social values they held dear and an economic and labor system that provided unsurpassed prosperity for a few and the prospects of financial advancement for the rest. With the secession of South Carolina in December 1860, three months before Lincoln took the oath of office as president, the nation’s other thirty-two states and seven territories would have to make the same choice—for the union or for state’s rights. For most states, there was little question as one after another became identified with either the North or the South. For a few states, most often identified as the border states—Missouri, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Maryland—the decision on secession was complicated and difficult. In the end, while these slave-holding states did not secede, slave owners still retained their human property until the Thirteenth Amendment, adopted in December 1865, ended slavery once and for all. As the war continued, Utah faced its own particular choices in its long-standing quest for statehood or secession. In that dilemma, as our first article explains, Utah’s Congressional delegate William H. Hooper played a critical role.

In 1875 two sisters of the Congregation of the Holy Cross arrived in Salt Lake City at the request of Father Lawrence Scanlan to establish a school for Catholic and other children in Utah and Nevada. That school, Saint Mary’s Academy, is the subject of our second article in this issue. Saint Mary’s remained an integral part of the Utah and Intermountain education community for nearly a century until the school closed in 1970.

A World War I billboard urging United states citizens to purchase war bonds.

UTAH STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY.

While Utah is known for many things, its tourism and the related movie industry must be included in any list. Two brothers, Gronway and Chauncey Parry, were instrumental in the promotion of both. Utilizing a combination of factors that included the designation of Mukuntuweap National Monument (later Zion National Park) in 1909, action by officials of the Los Angeles and Salt Lake Railroad to increase passenger traffic to southern Utah’s scenic wonders from the depot at Lund, thirty miles west of Cedar City, advances in the automobile, and the emergence of a new entertainment media—the movie, the enterprising Parry brothers undertook initiatives that, nearly a century later, continue to be a vital part of the state’s economy. Our final article for this issue brings together tragedy—the death of 120 men, women, and children at Mountain Meadows in 1857—and entertainment in an interesting account of how the southern Utah massacre became a popular attraction used by Buffalo Bill Cody in his wild west shows that toured much of the United States and Europe. With secession and statehood, education and relig ious commitment, tourism and economic development, murder and entertainment, our Summer issue paints a varied picture of Utah’s past.

A Utah Celery Week Exhibit in 1935.

UTAH STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY.