William Hope Harvey and the Ogden Mardi Gras

William Hope Harvey

and the Ogden Mardi Gras

By Val Holley

In the late nineteenth century, cities west of the Mississippi River promoted themselves through spectacular festivals in hopes of competing with eastern metropolises for capital and increased population. 1 Most took their inspiration from New Orleans’s annual Mardi Gras. The Veiled Prophet of St. Louis, in its inaugural year of 1878, purchased seventeen floats from New Orleans. 2 The extinct Seni-Om-Sed and Ak-Sar-Ben carnivals, organized in 1889 and 1895 to keep the Iowa and Nebraska state fairs from leaving Des Moines and Omaha, also imported floats from the Crescent City. 3 Beginning in 1883, San Francisco mounted onenight Mardi Gras celebrations annually, while Pueblo, Colorado—notwithstanding its concurrent publicity campaign as the “Pittsburgh of the West”—cloaked itself in New Orleanian garb during its own six-day Mardi Gras in February 1889. 4

Rocky Mountain Carnival program for July 2, 1890. At bottom left is an invitation to purchase lots in William Hope Harvey’s Iliff College Hill addition.

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Perhaps the most surprising contender in this cavalcade was Ogden, Utah, which staged a full-fledged Mardi Gras, called the Rocky Mountain Carnival, in July 1890. This occasion fostered some of the most improbable encounters between diverse populations that Utah has ever seen. From New Orleans came a special train bearing Mardi Gras royalty and dignitaries representing cotton exchanges and shipping enterprises. Two hundred cowboys from the open ranges of Utah and Idaho arrived to exhibit their skills at riding, roping, and bronco-busting. Shoshones and Bannocks journeyed from the Fort Hall Indian Reservation at Ross Fork north of Pocatello, Idaho, to perform war dances for the amazement of Rocky Mountain Carnival audiences.

This motley group converged on a city brimming with boosterism and delusions of grandeur. In the spring of 1887, Ogden’s advantages as a railroad junction had begun to interest eager capitalists. Nationally, the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887 had just become law, which led to hopes of equalized railroad rates and the establishment in Ogden of branch houses of national manufacturers. 5 Locally, the city had broken ground for a grand Union Station and had improved the streets between its railroad depot and downtown. According to the Ogden Standard, discerning merchants and manufacturers now perceived Ogden as “the coming Chicago” or the “great metropolis of the west.” 6

Looking north on Ogden’s Washington Boulevard, circa 1892. This view shows the Reed Hotel with its six-story tower on the right, kitty-corner from the three-story Broom Hotel on the left.

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By 1890, Ogden’s new class of Midas-touched men was touting the city as “without a rival between Denver and San Francisco,” destined to achieve a population of three hundred thousand by the turn of the century. 7 They concocted the Rocky Mountain Carnival as a high-profile way to advertise Ogden to real estate investors throughout the country. In so doing, they applied to Ogden the well-established formula for western land speculation described by the urban studies scholar Richard C. Wade: proclaiming a rising city’s “matchless situation,” then urging investors “to buy quickly before the price of town lots began to skyrocket.” 8

To the chagrin of its organizers, the Rocky Mountain Carnival was hijacked by conflict between Mormons and non-Mormons, just then at its zenith in Utah. A handful of other circumstances exacerbated this conflict, including recent federal laws that sought to stamp out polygamy through the confiscation of Mormon church property and the disenfranchisement of polygamists; a sizeable influx of non-Mormon voters who had come to Ogden to get rich; and the Mormon People’s Party’s much-lamented defeat in the Ogden and Salt Lake City municipal elections. 9 The organizers did not foresee this outcome. They cared primarily about making money and felt that religious wars were a waste of time.

In the weeks preceding the Mardi Gras, a temporary Carnival Palace went up on Twenty-Fifth Street; it was the size of a football field and was said to have the seating capacity of the Salt Lake Tabernacle. 10 At the western end of Twenty-Fifth Street, craftsmen erected a twenty-foot-high Arch of Welcome, under which carnival royalty would parade, expertly painting it to look like granite and festooning it with royal purple, green, and gold. Carpenters transformed Twenty-Fourth Street between Lincoln and Grant Avenues into a tournament field for armored knights on horseback, with bleacher seating. Organizers planned cowboy exhibitions, military drilling competitions, bicycle races, excursions to the Great Salt Lake, a grand parade with costumes from New Orleans, and nightly grand balls, each with a different theme.

On Tuesday morning, July 1, 1890, crowds thronged the new Union Station for the arrival of the special train from New Orleans. Twenty-Fifth and Twenty-Fourth streets and Washington Avenue were awash in purple, green, and gold bunting. Horsedrawn vehicles sported the royal colors, and bicycle wheels revolved with kaleidoscopic hues. As the train pulled in, it was a sight to behold: two gilded sphinxes adorned the engine. Murals painted on the cars depicted the tropical splendor of New Orleans—palm trees, exotic fruits—and the mountains of the West. 11

Among the royalty and dignitaries on the train were Sylvester Pierce Walmsley, crowned King Rex at the New Orleans Mardi Gras four months earlier; Major John Henry Behan, a designer of floats and spectacles; Captain Thomas Pickles, a shipping magnate; Captain William H. Beanham, the commander of the Louisiana Field Artillery; and Kate Bridewell, a singer who would enchant audiences in the Carnival Palace. The celebrated Louisiana Rifles, who had won many national drilling competitions, served as the royal party’s military escort. 12 However, the names of the two most important members of the royal party were unknown. They were Rex II, king of the Rocky Mountain Carnival, and his queen, and their faces would be concealed by veils—black for Rex II and pink for his consort—during the entire week, until midnight at the grand masked ball on Friday, July 4. The identity of these mysterious figures was the subject of intense speculation among the public and the press. 13

As soon as the New Orleans delegation had disembarked from the train, Frederick J. Kiesel, Ogden’s first Liberal mayor, presented the keys to the city to Captain William Beanham, spokesman and Lord High Chancellor to King Rex of New Orleans. With the Louisiana Rifles in the vanguard, a procession of royalty, military companies, and costumed knights and Arabs marched eastward on Twenty-Fifth Street, with the cowboys bringing up the rear. 14 Mayor Kiesel quartered the guests from New Orleans at his mansion and entertained them lavishly all week. A trout breakfast hosted in Ogden Canyon would prove to be one of the best investments Ogden ever made. 15

How was a small city like Ogden, whose population was under fifteen thousand, able to marshal its manpower to bring off a Mardi Gras–sized festivity in just four months? And who in Ogden had the chutzpah to conceive of such an undertaking? The answer lay in the entrepreneurs who had moved to Ogden to get rich.

Colonel William Hope Harvey, “by all odds the most picturesque and original character of Ogden’s ‘Golden Age,’” had launched his career as an attorney in West Virginia and Ohio. 16 He later owned and operated a silver mine in Ouray, Colorado, before going into real estate development in Denver and Pueblo. His title, colonel, was ironic, since Harvey had never seen military service. Through his natural flair for publicity, he was said to have lured hundreds of real estate and precious metals investors to Colorado. His success in growing- Colorado’s population prompted the governor to place the state’s military regiments under his command. 17

Although William Harvey lived in Ogden less than five years, he made great contributions to its development.

trumbell white, silver and gold (1895)

The same prescience that informed Harvey’s Colorado investments prompted his discernment of Ogden’s potential. By late 1888 he claimed Ogden as his home and said he would move there “as soon as my business in Colorado is settled up.” Already he was saying that Ogden must “control the trade along all the railroads that center there” and “should not let Salt Lake City get ahead of you as a commercial center.” He boasted that he could submit a plan within ninety days for Ogden to build the finest hotel west of Chicago. Harvey insisted that “if your town goes progressive in February [1889]”—in other words, if Ogdenites elected a non-Mormon, Liberal Party city government—“I can bring gentlemen with me there in sixty days representing five million dollars. . . . If you were to take a Denver man’s advice and follow it, he could tell you how to down Salt Lake City within two years.” 18

Addressing a Liberal Party rally preceding Ogden’s February 1889 municipal elections, Harvey said, “One hundred thousand dollars in advertising would not do as much good as news flashing over the wires . . . that Ogden is [now] a Gentile town.” Soon after his January 1890 election to the Ogden Chamber of Commerce’s board of directors, he proposed an advertising campaign comparing Springfield and Chicago, Lincoln and Omaha, Colorado City and Denver, and Salt Lake City and Ogden. The first-named town in each pair, he said, represented the old, noncompetitive town, while the second stood for the new, progressive, active city. 19

Accustomed as Ogden soon grew to Harvey’s penchant for ballyhoo, his scheme for a Mardi Gras, kept tightly under wraps until it was ready, came like a surprise attack. Harvey appeared in the Ogden mayor’s office on February 25, 1890, and presented an epistle from His Majesty Rex of the Royal Host of New Orleans that approved “with satisfaction” of the steady growth of the nation’s population west of the Mississippi and desired to establish “a second seat of empire . . . [and] the City of Ogden finds first favor with my royal consort.” Kiesel was in New York, but deputy mayor Watson N. Shilling at once accepted King Rex’s proposal for “our grand fête and carnival festivities.” 20

The Salt Lake Tribune later reported that Harvey’s “proposition . . . was not viewed favorably at first [in New Orleans] and it was with some difficulty that he secured the favor of a special meeting of the royal council to consider his plans.” 21 The Tribune’s account may not be accurate. The Utah press never seemed aware that Harvey already had considerable experience as an organizer of the Pueblo, Colorado, Mardi Gras in 1889 and that he was the ideal advocate for a Rex franchise. 22

Late in March 1890, Harvey, his older brother Robert Smith Harvey (“the only man competent to fill my place [after I am back in Ogden]”), and his Denver stenographer invaded New Orleans to establish an advertising bureau. New Orleans, Harvey felt, “had an effect in claiming attention that would [be] impossible [in] Ogden.” Over the next three months the bureau sent out 70,000 five-color lithographic sheets; 20,000 letters signed by the Rex Order, with gold leaf seal; and 11,000 marked copies of New Orleans newspaper articles on the carnival to all newspapers, governors, congressmen, mayors, chambers of commerce, and railroad passenger agents in the United States. “I will set substantially everybody in the United States to talking about Ogden and Utah,” Harvey confidently asserted. 23

To manage the Rocky Mountain Carnival’s daunting logistics, Harvey organized a counterpart to New Orleans’s Royal Host, christening it the Order of Monte Cristo. The journalist, historian, and Monte Cristo man Olin A. Kennedy said that the order’s members—at least two-thirds of whom had not lived in Ogden more than one year—were real estate dealers, businessmen, and newsmen. Aside from paying dues to support the carnival, members were expected to rehearse and drill as costumed Arabs, medieval knights, or cowboys—or if not, to assist in such tasks as leading horses who would pull floats in the grand parade on July 4. 24

To construct the parade’s floats and supervise decoration of the Arch of Welcome and Carnival Palace, Harvey recruited “Major” David L. Levy of San Francisco, whom he had known as the designer of Pueblo’s Mardi Gras. 25 Harvey and Levy account for the similarities in program and design between Ogden and Pueblo celebrations, but the most notable difference was Pueblo’s apparent lack of any New Orleanian authorization or presence. 26 Ogden’s Rocky Mountain Carnival was the only known “transplant” Mardi Gras to win the enthusiastic endorsement and participation of the Royal Host. 27

Boosters of western land booms “always inclined toward enthusiastic exaggeration and self-interested promotion,” writes the historian William Cronon, and perhaps Ogden’s most extreme example of this was Clifton E. Mayne, marshal of the Monte Cristos. 28 According to Omaha Illustrated, Mayne had “caught the first high flood of the Omaha boom” in 1883 and was “more closely identified with the wonderful growth and prosperity of Omaha” than anyone else. 29 But by 1888, Mayne had lost everything and moved to San Francisco. Early in 1890 he established the C. E. Mayne Company, a real estate brokerage in Ogden, and with Harvey was elected to the Chamber of Commerce board. Mayne was a con artist and scoundrel. The single most outrageous scheme of his career, which occurred five years after the Rocky Mountain Carnival, stemmed from his knowledge of a deceased Colorado mining magnate whose estranged young daughters, heiresses to a $15 million estate, had vanished. Mayne advertised in newspapers for two girls who might pass as the missing daughters. He connived to become legal guardian of the winning “sisters” and to claim the magnate’s estate on their behalf. However, Mayne’s political enemies in San Francisco derailed the scheme through a trumped-up rape charge, sending Mayne to prison. 30 Ogdenites, however, viewed Mayne’s 1890 maneuverings as merely another aspect of their city’s real estate boom.

In the spring of 1890, high-ranking Monte Cristos, designated as ministers plenipotentiary, fanned out across the country to advertise the Rocky Mountain Carnival. Harvey’s target was Chicago. Albert Richardson, who had speculated in Kansas City real estate before he discovered Ogden, traveled to New York. Richardson told the New York Sun that Ogden had no Mormon–Gentile conflict and that the “speculative fever had found no habitation there,” assertions that were untrue. Flattering New York’s high self-regard, Richardson said Ogden’s queen would be selected from the legendary List of Four Hundred, the compendium of New York society, and implied that he was in the city to escort “Her Majesty” to Utah. Further, said Richardson, he wanted Ward McAllister, ringmaster of New York’s grandest social occasions, “to take charge of [Ogden’s grand masked] ball and make it . . . an example of taste and order and perfection.” 31

Meanwhile, Clifton Mayne returned to Omaha, the scene of his first fortune, where he was still considered the man who had made it a metropolis. In telling the Omaha press that Ogden was absolutely in the throes of a boom, he contradicted Albert Richardson, but for once was telling the truth. However, he falsely claimed that Ogden’s population had increased by five thousand in the past three months and boasted of schemes to establish stockyards, to mine iron and granite within four miles of the city, and to build a power dam on the Ogden River to electrify the city’s streetcar system. 32 While Mayne was in Omaha, his company in San Francisco ran daily ads proclaiming, “Fortunes may be made by investing in Ogden real estate now!” 33

Despite Harvey’s good intentions, it was impossible to stage the Rocky Mountain Carnival in a vacuum devoid of the Mormon–Gentile conflict, which had escalated after the Liberal Party’s victory in February 1889. Ogden’s newly installed city council soon appropriated the city block on which the Mormon tabernacle sat “for use as a public square,” believing the church had never secured legal title. 34 During a stormy Ogden school district meeting at the tabernacle in July 1889, Mormons nominated one chairman and non-Mormons nominated another. Olin A. Kennedy, who was there, recalled that both chairmen repeatedly ruled each other out of order, fistfights ensued, Mormons were shouted down as “mossbacks,” and Gentiles were jeered as “carpetbaggers.” 35

An 1884 Mormon–Gentile donnybrook in Salt Lake City would also haunt the carnival. The editor of the Deseret News, John Q. Cannon, a tall man who weighed two hundred pounds, assaulted a bantam-weight Salt Lake Tribune reporter, Joseph Lippman, who had written that Cannon had secretly taken a plural wife. 36 Henceforth, the Tribune considered Cannon persona non grata. Six years later, Cannon, by then associate editor of the Ogden Standard, ran the paper while its editor, his half-brother Frank Cannon, negotiated in Washington, D.C., to stymie a pair of Congressional bills that would disenfranchise all members of the Mormon church. 37 Just before the carnival, a feud of daily mutual insults erupted between John Q. Cannon (who was a Monte Cristo) and the Tribune’s Ogden correspondent. Cannon berated the Tribune correspondent for writing “rot manufactured to fill space” and “dirty and malicious flings.” The Tribune man called Cannon “the imbecile brother.” 38

Two years after John Q. Cannon’s assault on the Salt Lake Tribune’s Joseph Lippman, the Tribune called Cannon (seated left) “reporter smasher.”

utah state historical society

While most Utah newspapers bent over backwards to boost the carnival, the sentiment was not unanimous. In the Logan Journal, a letter signed “Mormon Elder” condemned the character of cowboys and Ogden establishments most likely to benefit from the presence of cowboys. Most of the crowds in attendance at the carnival, said the writer, would be “ignorant, desperate, and wicked.” 39 The Deseret News advised its readers to shun the carnival, calling it “senseless frivolity,” “sickening to common sense,” and a “heterogenous heap of rubbish.” 40 While the Deseret News did cover the goings-on, it emphasized the discomfort of the heat and inconvenience. 41 It deplored the carnival’s “direct variance with the spirit of the Gospel” and its “aspect more vile than buffoonery.” 42

On the evening of July 1, a sumptuous king’s banquet in the Carnival Palace featured buffalo, bear steaks, and choice champagne. The hides of barbequed animals were garishly displayed on butcher blocks to evoke an Arthurian feasting hall. 43 Mayor Kiesel was the toastmaster, and one of his many tributes was to the Mormon pioneers. 44 According to Kennedy, everyone sprang to their feet, cheering and clinking their wine glasses. Someone stood on a chair and proposed “three cheers for the Utah pioneers” and someone else added “and Brigham Young!” The cheers resounded, and the Louisiana guests gave the “old rebel yell,” the blood-curdling whoop of Confederate soldiers.

Years later, Kennedy recalled that the old rebel yell angered Union Army veterans inside the Carnival Palace. Nor did cheers for Brigham Young amuse non-Mormons. Standing with the press behind the king’s throne was Samuel M. Preshaw, judge of the Ogden police court. Judge Preshaw was a Methodist and teetotaler. 45 He was no fan of Brigham Young.

The judge muttered to Kennedy, “Look at ‘em! Sitting there guzzling and swilling wine! And cheering for Brigham Young. The mayor and everybody else. It’s a disgrace!” A special police force volunteer, who had innocently yelled for Young, stood behind Preshaw. Glaring at the volunteer, the judge sneered, “Young man, ain’t you ashamed of yourself to stand there wearing the badge of Ogden City and cheering for Brigham Young?” The volunteer stammered that his pioneer heritage gave him the right to lionize Utah’s earliest governor. “Very well, then,” replied Preshaw. “You just come around to the police court tomorrow morning at ten o’clock and turn in that [badge].” 46 Such petulance would morph into an epidemic by week’s end and hijack the Rocky Mountain Carnival.

The official program for Wednesday, July 2, featured cowboy lasso and horsemanship exhibitions, a bicycle race, the royal tournament (in which knights at full gallop “tilted,” or caught two-inch iron rings on a long spear), and the tournament ball to honor victorious knights. But an unheralded event turned into one of the day’s major attractions: the arrival, by Union Pacific train, of some 160 Bannocks and Shoshones from Idaho. These tribes, said the Salt Lake Herald, traveled the country giving war dance exhibitions. 47 Accompanied by interpreters, the tribal police chief, and the Indian agent S. G. Fisher, they wore brightly colored shawls and blankets, and some had painted their faces. As they walked the five blocks from the station to the campground reserved for them at Twenty-Eighth Street and Grant Avenue, they “chanted a doleful dirge” and were followed by a large and curious crowd. 48 That evening the Indians were escorted to the tournament ball, quietly conducted through the Carnival Palace amidst the stares of waltzing couples, and presented to the royal households of New Orleans and Ogden upon their thrones. 49 Earlier that day, Kiesel issued a proclamation not to sell or share liquor or intoxicating substances to the Indians under penalty of U.S. law. 50

The inspiration to bring the Shoshones and Bannocks to the Rocky Mountain Carnival was not attributed, but Ogden and Salt Lake City had competed fiercely for an appearance by the tribes. The Ogden Standard said the idea originated in Ogden, but Salt Lake City, needing a

July 4 show-stopper to compete with the Mardi Gras, tried brazenly to steal the tribal show away. 51 The Salt Lake Herald’s version alleged the opposite: that the capital city first announced the Indians as its main Independence Day event, after which Ogden swooped in and preempted it. 52 Indian agent Fisher had apparently written the Salt Lake City real estate exchange on July 8 that it could count on the Fort Hall tribes’ appearance. Five days later, Fisher sent another letter saying, “Since writing you . . . I have been called on by one of the promoters of the Ogden carnival and have made arrangements to visit their city during the celebration with Indians from the reservation.” 53

Conceding that “Ogden had outwitted her neighbor,” the Salt Lake Herald lamented that “Salt Lake’s diplomacy is of the two-penny postage stamp, while little Ogden utilizes the telegraph and ministers plenipotentiary.” 54 The secret to trumping Salt Lake City, however, may have been cash. Arthur B. Hayes, editor of the Ogden Daily Commercial, later told a Pennsylvania reporter that the Indians “demanded five thousand dollars for their work . . . and they got it.” 55

As an entr’acte between Thursday night’s drilling competition and the military ball, the Shoshones and Bannocks assembled in the Carnival Palace to give their much-anticipated war dance for ten thousand spectators. According to Salt Lake City newspapers—and reflecting the language of the era—the older men and women beat tom-toms, while the young men, “clad in the light of the moon and fancy rings of paint,” formed a long line, emitting a “hum and drone and falsetto shout” and swaying to and fro. Suddenly, as if forgetting their lines, they sat down on the floor in silence. Harvey, on his feet at once, told the audience the dancers were miffed at its failure to throw money. An interpreter promised the performers belated manifestations of audience approval. 56

Fort Hall Indians perform a traditional dance.

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The drummers resumed beating, surrounded by women, children, and dogs. Now the young men went into “spasmodic” bodily contortions under an incessant shower of Liberty Head nickels. They imitated grizzly bears, coyotes, bulls, ponies, pigeons, and chickens. “Each warrior represented a different character,” reported Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper. “It was like a great character play.” The audience roared its approval of the “aboriginal tactics.” When the applause died down, the chiefs were presented at Rex II’s throne and decorated with royal medals, in appreciation, they were told, for saving many white men’s lives. 57

From the outset, journalists and others had speculated about the identities of Rex II and his queen. Some newspapers insisted the queen was Nellie Bly—the New York World reporter famous for her recent trip around the world in less than eighty days—or Mrs. James G. Blaine Jr., the daughter-in-law of the U.S. Secretary of State. 58 The morning of the grand masked ball, the Salt Lake Herald published its final guess, which would prove correct. The young son of the Chamber of Commerce president, Alfred Nelson, with whom Rex II was lodging, had recognized the king’s voice and spilled the beans. 59 Rex II was John Q. Cannon, the Mormon associate editor of the Ogden Standard and the nemesis of the Salt Lake Tribune, and the queen was no New York diva but Ogden’s own Minerva Anderson, the daughter of the owner of the Harrisville Brick Yard. 60 However, the carnival officials could only maintain silence.

Two versions exist of what happened next, both seemingly credible. Olin A. Kennedy reported that the non-Mormon newspapers complained bitterly of the coronation of the Ogden Standard’s John Q. Cannon. “Here we’ve been boosting this [blessed] carnival from the very first,” they reasoned, “giving whole pages of publicity and sending out thousands of copies free, only to see it turned into an advertising stunt for the Standard, our hardest competitor. There’ll be merry hell in the morning if Colonel Harvey persists in putting that over.” They warned that costumed companies of Arabs would march into the grand masked ball and throw their spears and robes in a pile in front of the throne and that cowboys would gallop into the palace and shoot out the lights.

Kennedy, a personal friend of Harvey, was pressured by his fellow journalists to break the news of the imminent mutiny. Harvey protested, “You don’t think that selecting a prominent Mormon to be king would be a graceful and conciliatory thing to do? In other words, has the time come to put an end to this senseless antagonism between Mormons and Gentiles in this city and Utah?” However, he also asked Kennedy to tell the newsmen they would not be disappointed. 61

Mardi Gras in New Orleans, Louisiana, circa 1900.

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The other version, reported decades later by Sylvester Pierce Walmsley, attributed the rebellion not to the non-Mormon press but to an unspecified committee of non-Mormons who showed up at Kiesel’s home and demanded an audience with Walmsley, the reigning Rex of New Orleans. The committee made the same complaints as those reported by Kennedy, but its threat was far more serious: regicide. Any Mormon unmasked as king, the ad hoc committee informed Walmsley, would be shot dead. Walmsley said he could do nothing beyond his assigned duties in assisting the Order of Monte Cristo in presenting the carnival. 62

While the Monte Cristos and the Royal Host of New Orleans scrambled to resolve the eleventh-hour palace intrigue, costumed revelers, brass bands, railroad men, Shoshones, Bannocks, cowboy brigades, and five elaborate floats formed in procession for the evening’s parade, or “great street pageant,” south along Washington Avenue. Stateof-the-art pyrotechnics lit up the street and skies in red and blue. The five floats, interspersed between marching courtiers and groups on horseback, featured King Rex II on his throne, the queen on her throne, tournament knights, the king of the cowboys, miners, and Indians. From Kennedy’s perspective, the audience furnished entertainment on par with the pageant. “For the first time,” he wrote, “Ogden saw and learned to throw confetti. And the giddier element blew horns in one another’s ears.” If Kennedy’s memory was accurate, bonfires lighted on Mount Ogden, Ben Lomond, Willard Peak, and even one of the Promontory peaks framed the pageant impressively. 63

Before the dancing began at the grand masked ball, the Shoshones and Bannocks performed their big horse dance. The chiefs wore elaborate headdresses; the warriors wore little more than war paint, smeared from head to foot in yellow ochre and daubed with blue spots. As Perry Young reported, they formed a large circle and began a whoop that might have put the old rebel yell to shame. As women beat the tom-toms, the warriors pranced around the hall in contorted postures, sometimes falling to the floor in unison. 64 Some felt that the Indians “smacked more of the Mardi Gras spirit than any other feature” at the carnival. 65

The gorgeous and grotesque costumes of 2,200 masked dancers provided a spectacle not previously beheld in Utah. Giraffes, zebras, unicorns, lobsters, and grasshoppers; Harlequins, Punchinellos, Helen of Troy, Satan, and Siamese twins all tripped the light fantastic. One standout was Josephine, empress of France, in a décolleté black gown trimmed in roses and diamonds, displaying a lovely pair of shoulders. Hours later, when everyone unmasked, Josephine proved to be Mr. Will Stoddard of Park City, escorted by Mr. T. W. Clayton. 66

Walmsley’s account of the ball relates that three solemn-faced men, not costumed but in evening dress, appeared at the foot of King Rex II’s throne during the ball, ready to annihilate any Mormon king. What these three men never realized, Walmsley said, was that a detail of the Louisiana Rifles had them covered with loaded guns from the minute they appeared, ready to drop them in their tracks if they made any false move. 67

At midnight Harvey led His Majesty, Rex II, to the edge of the stage, unveiling Major John Henry Behan, the New Orleans carnival designer who had mingled without mask at all tournaments and ceremonial events. The substitution came too late to prevent newspapers all over the country from printing a syndicated dispatch on Saturday morning saying Rex II was John Q. Cannon of the Ogden Standard. 68 Walmsley recalled that Cannon had not been afraid to risk assassination and was persuaded to abdicate “only with the greatest difficulty.” 69

When it was over, the Salt Lake Herald said the Rocky Mountain Carnival “has not been a burlesque but a very creditable presentation.” 70 If it lacked the “frivolity” of New Orleans, its gangs of cowboys and dancing Native Americans lent the affair a western air. 71 Signs of cultural disconnect appeared at various moments, as the New Orleans folks were “not the least interested” in the Wild West exhibitions, while the Utahns were underwhelmed by the armored knights’ jousting, “which was not as interesting to them as a game of baseball would have been.” 72

To Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, a national periodical, it was “all and more than its promoters claimed it would be. Perhaps it was the most unique and altogether interesting series of scenic events and animated and picturesque life ever seen in America. . . . The writer has seen the greatest masked balls in New York and New Orleans, but nothing to equal this ball.” 73 Major John Henry Behan—the last-minute King Rex II and a veteran Mardi Gras impresario—paid the Monte Cristos a premium compliment: “You have done wonderfully well . . . . I have found but few defects in your arrangements and those that have been noticed have been trifling.” 74

For the major participants of the carnival, the experience yielded both personal successes and disappointments. Harvey succeeded in selling lots in his Iliff College Hill subdivision to New Orleans guests. 75 Kate Bridewell, the New Orleans songstress who brought down the house in her Ogden performances, married Will Anderson, brother to the carnival queen, and became one of Utah’s most popular vocalists. 76 Clifton Mayne’s real estate company shuttered within a month of the carnival, but his San Francisco office went into high gear hawking Ogden real estate. The Sacramento Daily Record-Union, however, warned, “The very fact that Ogden is advertising its growth and its townsite additions in Chicago and San Francisco is a proof that a swindle is intended.” 77

The gorgeous and grotesque costumes of 2,200 masked dancers provided a spectacle not previously beheld in Utah.

The Ogden Standard praised the Shoshones and Bannocks for their “orderly” and “sober” visit. Knowing the Indians had admired the bunting and flags displayed throughout Ogden, the Monte Cristos collected the decorations and shipped them to Fort Hall. Tepees at the Grant Avenue campsite were to remain as standing advertisements for an 1891 carnival. As Ogdenites resumed normalcy, many of them still assumed an encore would occur the following summer. 78 The Monte Cristos met in early August to strategize for 1891 and “retained” Levy not only to design a second carnival but also to supervise the construction of a large warehouse for storing floats and building more. 79

From the carnival’s inception Harvey had envisioned it as self-sustaining and recurring. “[We shall] place it on a financial basis that will each year clear expenses and leave a balance in the treasury,” he had written from New Orleans. 80 However, when the treasurer’s report finally appeared in September, the Monte Cristos learned they were ten thousand dollars in the hole. 81 They were probably unaware that the 1889 Pueblo, Colorado, Mardi Gras had likewise yielded sunny projections of doing it again, but then quietly faded out. 82

Olin A. Kennedy’s 1931 articles about the Rocky Mountain Carnival, which became its most commonly cited reference source, described a bleak financial aftermath. Kennedy wrote that the Monte Cristos held only one tense meeting before dissolving forever; that Harvey lost his home and the Iliff College Hill subdivision in paying off creditors; and that litigation over unpaid bills dragged on for several years. 83 However, a closer look seems to show that Kennedy’s recollections were excessively pessimistic. Some suits brought against Harvey and the Monte Cristos were dismissed. The Monte Cristos continued meeting regularly throughout the remainder of 1890. 84

The Rocky Mountain Carnival left no permanent landmark to bolster Ogden’s skyline. Its Carnival Palace and Arch of Welcome were dismantled within two months. The temporary transformation of Twenty-Fifth Street into a tableau of pageantry could not lift it out of mundane squalor. No sooner had the revelers left town than the newspapers resumed their complaints about vagrants who loitered in front of saloons and bothered women at Union Station. 85

This purple and gold ribbon is a rare surviving relic of the Rocky Mountain Carnival.

stewart library special collections

Harvey, far from slinking out of Ogden in disgrace, became Chamber of Commerce president. In 1892 he returned to New Orleans for the Trans-Mississippi Commercial Congress, an annual convention during which initiatives to benefit the West were debated and formalized as proposals to the U.S. Congress. 86 Although Harvey was Utah’s only delegate, he brought home a major trophy: Ogden’s selection as 1893 Trans-Mississippi Congress host city, beating out Houston, Texas, and Sioux City, Iowa. Harvey’s old friend Captain William Beanham of New Orleans seconded Ogden’s nomination from the floor. 87

Ogden was euphoric. “If this should happen to meet Captain Beanham’s eye,” wrote Frank Cannon in the Standard, “he will confer a favor by receiving this as an invitation to another trout breakfast in Ogden Canyon. We thought that the hot biscuits and trout which were cast upon the dancing waters of his soul two years ago would return after many days in the shape of frosted cake and goldfish.” 88

The “very creditable” Rocky Mountain Carnival served as the apogee of Ogden’s experimentation in nineteenth-century boosterism, as speculators feverishly advertised its utopian climate. Since so many western cities mounted similar campaigns, in the end Ogden seemed merely ordinary rather than unique. What could not be duplicated elsewhere was the carnival’s unforeseen detour into thickets of religious conflict. The eventual easing of that conflict would free Ogden to implement William Hope Harvey’s legacy: that a highly effective chamber of commerce can work miracles.

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Val Holley is an independent historian in Washington, D.C. His book, 25th Street Confidential, was published last year by the University of Utah Press.

NOTES

1 This article is adapted from the author’s September 20, 2012, keynote address at the Sixtieth Annual Utah State History Conference, whose theme was “Encounters: Moments of Change.”

2 “History,” Veiled Prophet Organization, accessed August 12, 2013, http://www. veiledprophet.org/parade/history.

3 Dave Elbert, “Bring Back Seni Om Sed,” Business Record, July 19, 2013, accessed August 12, 2013, http://www.businessrecord.com/Content/Opinion/Opinion/Article/The- Elbert-Files--Bring-back-Seni-Om-Sed/168/963/59120; “History,” Knights of Ak-Sar- Ben Foundation, accessed August 12, 2013, http://www.aksarben.org/history2. Omaha held a one-day Mardi Gras in 1886; see Omaha Daily Bee, April 8, 1886.

4 Sacramento Daily Union, March 3, 1883; San Francisco Daily Alta California, February 27, 1884, February 18, 1885, February 15, 1888; Pueblo (CO) Daily Chieftain, February 26, 1889. For “Pittsburgh of the West,” see Pueblo (CO) Daily Chieftain, March 1, 1889; Ogden Standard, August 21, 1889.

5 Act to Regulate Commerce, U.S. Statutes at Large 24 (1887): 379–87. The Interstate Commerce Act aimed to prevent “unjust discrimination between persons, places, commodities, or particular descriptions of traffic.” U.S. Senate, Select Committee on Interstate Commerce, 49th Cong., 1st sess., Sen. Report 46, Part I, 1886, 215.

6 Ogden Standard, March 22, 1887.

7 San Francisco Call, May 11, July 13, 1890.

8 Richard C. Wade, The Urban Frontier: The Rise of Western Cities, 1790–1830 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1959), 32.

9 Val Holley, 25th Street Confidential: Drama, Decadence, and Dissipation along Ogden’s Rowdiest Road (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2013), 4. The laws were the Edmunds Act, U.S. Statutes at Large 22 (1882): 30–32, and the Edmunds-Tucker Act, U.S. Statutes at Large 24 (1887): 635– 41.

10 Ogden Standard, July 1, 1890; Salt Lake Tribune, June 18, 1890. The New York Sun of June 5, 1890, said the Carnival Palace’s dimensions were 314 feet by 136 feet.

11 Salt Lake Herald, July 2, 1890; Ogden Standard, July 2, 1890.

12 Salt Lake Tribune, July 2, 1890; Washington, D.C., Evening Star, May 21, 1887.

13 Perry Young, The Mystick Krewe; Chronicles of Comus and His Kin (New Orleans: Louisiana Heritage Press, 1969), 178.

14 Accounts of the carnival’s first day appeared in the Ogden Daily Commercial, Ogden Standard, Salt Lake Tribune, and Salt Lake Herald, July 2, 1890.

15 Ogden Standard, February 27, 1892.

16 Olin A. Kennedy’s characterization of Harvey, from the Ogden Standard-Examiner of May 6, 1931, was later used without attribution in Works Projects Administration for the State of Utah, Utah: A Guide to the State (New York: Hastings House, 1941), 212. Kennedy’s article was the first in a nine-part series of reminiscences about Harvey and the carnival.

17 Lois Snelling, “Coin Harvey of Monte Ne,” typescript, Special Collections, Pueblo City-County Library, Pueblo, Colorado.

18 Ogden Standard, November 29, 1888.

19 Ogden Standard, February 10, 1889, February 26, 1890.

20 Ogden Standard, February 26, 1890.

21 Salt Lake Tribune, June 29, 1890. This account dated Harvey’s in-person appeal to the Rex Organization in March, but for an official edict to be on the Ogden mayor’s desk on February 25, Harvey had to have been in New Orleans earlier, possibly during Mardi Gras, which began February 17. Harvey knew New Orleans from visiting his uncle, the canal builder Joseph Hale Harvey, who lived there. Allyn Lord, email message to author, September 26, 2012.

22 Pueblo (CO) Daily Chieftain, February 26, March 1, 1889; Leadville (CO) Evening Democrat, February 26, 1889.

23 Ogden Standard, July 22, 1890; Harvey to Clifton E. Mayne, March 30, 1890, reprinted in Ogden Daily Commercial, April 6, 1890 (quotations).

24 Salt Lake Herald, April 26, 1890; Ogden Standard, May 9, 1890; Ogden Standard-Examiner, May 6, 7, 1931.

25 Ogden Standard, May 9, 1890; Salt Lake Herald, June 22, 1890. Levy’s role in the Pueblo Mardi Gras is detailed in Pueblo (CO) Daily Chieftain, February 15, 23, 1889; Aspen Weekly Times, February 16, 1889. Young, Mystick Krewe, 177, implies that Major John Henry Behan of New Orleans was the Rocky Mountain Carnival’s designer, but Behan’s job in Ogden was chief of protocol. Levy clearly designed the Ogden show.

26 Levy, whose “major” signified not military rank but prowess in marching bands, designed San Francisco’s February 1884 Mardi Gras. Although he traveled to New Orleans to buy properties and get ideas, his 1884 event did not have the Royal Host’s charter or consultation. Los Angeles Herald, January 10, 1884; San Francisco Daily Alta California, January 24, February 27, 1884; Salt Lake Herald, July 23, 1890.

27 Stephen Hales, the present-day archivist of the Rex Organization (and a native Ogdenite), writes, “The only other instance I have found where Rex Royalty and officials made, or offered to make, a trip to the site of [a] Carnival transplant was the fizzled effort in Saratoga Springs, New York.” Email message to author, March 11, 2012.

28 William Cronon, Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West (New York: W. W. Norton, 1991), 34.

29 Alfred Rasmus Sorensen, Omaha Illustrated: A History of the Pioneer Period and the Omaha of Today (Omaha: D. C. Dunbar, 1888), 86–87.

30 San Francisco Call, September 21, 1908. Mayne was freed from prison after his accuser confessed that her testimony had been false and part of a conspiracy. See Los Angeles Herald, October 26, 1897.

31 New York Sun, June 5, 1890.

32 Omaha Daily Bee, May 13, 1890.

33 San Francisco Call, May 11, 24, 25, 27, 31, 1890.

34 Ogden City Council, Minute Book H, March 1, 1889, p. 29, Ogden City Recorder’s Office. Five years later the city council returned Tabernacle Square to the Mormon church. See Ogden Standard, December 21, 1893.

35 The school district meeting was reported in the Ogden Standard, July 9, 1889, and remembered by Kennedy in the same newspaper, July 12, 1919.

36 Kenneth L. Cannon II, “The Tragic Matter of Louie Wells and John Q. Cannon,” Journal of Mormon History 35, no. 2 (Spring 2009): 151–55.

37 Michael Harold Paulos, “Opposing the ‘High Ecclesiasts at Washington’: Frank J. Cannon’s Editorial Fusillades during the Reed Smoot Hearings, 1903–07,” Journal of Mormon History 37, no. 9 (Fall 2011). For an account of Frank Cannon’s work against the Cullom and Struble bills (S. 3480 and H.R. 9265, 51st Cong., 1st sess., 1890), see Robert Newton Baskin, Reminiscences of Early Utah (Salt Lake City: Tribune-Reporter Printing, 1914), 183–86. Frank Cannon returned to Ogden on June 10 and, on July 2, delivered the chivalric charge to knights competing in the carnival’s tilting tournament. See Ogden Standard, June 11, 1890; Ogden Daily Commercial, July 3, 1890.

38 Ogden Standard, June 19, 1890; Salt Lake Tribune, June 20, 1890. Monte Cristo membership listed in Ogden Standard, May 9, 1890.

39 Logan (UT) Journal, July 2, 1890. As if to rebut the Logan Journal’s blast, the Salt Lake Tribune noted on July 6, 1890, that the cowboys “have vindicated the words of their friends, who told the carnival committee that they could depend on the cowboys as natural gentlemen to behave themselves.”

40 Deseret Evening News, June 7, July 5, 1890.

41 Deseret Evening News, July 1, 1890, cited in Logan Journal, July 2, 1890.

42 Deseret Evening News, June 7, 1890.

43 Ogden Daily Commercial, July 2, 1890.

44 Ogden Standard, July 2, 1890; Ogden Daily Commercial, July 2, 1890.

45 Ogden Standard (semi-weekly ed.), March 6, 1889; Ogden Standard-Examiner, May 11, 1931. Kennedy’s recollection that Preshaw “had served four years in the Union army during the Civil War and had heard the rebel yell at close quarters” cannot be verified and appears to be inaccurate. Preshaw’s only known service was in the short-lived, “bloodless” Colorado Cavalry, Third Regiment, Company A. Find a Grave, accessed June 4, 2013, http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/ fg.cgi?page=pv&GRid=75524018&PIpi=78310394. Ogden’s Liberals, however, included Union Army veterans such as General Robert H. G. Minty, whose Rocky Mountain Carnival role was chief of staff to the commander of King Rex II’s forces.

46 Ogden Standard-Examiner, May 11, 1931.

47 Salt Lake Herald, June 11, 1890.

48 Ogden Daily Commercial, July 3, 1890; Ogden Standard, July 3, 1890.

49 Ogden Daily Commercial, July 3, 1890.

50 Salt Lake Tribune, July 4, 1890.

51 Ogden Standard, July 4, 1890, cited in Deseret Evening News, July 5, 1890.

52 Salt Lake Herald, June 17, 1890.

53 Ibid.

54 Ibid.

55 Pittsburg Dispatch, November 30, 1890. Hayes was later the U.S. solicitor of internal revenue; see Salt Lake Tribune, March 17, 1903.

56 Salt Lake Herald, July 4, 1890; Salt Lake Tribune, July 6, 1890.

57 Salt Lake Tribune, July 6, 1890; Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, August 2, 1890.

58 Salt Lake Herald, June 22, 1890; Salt Lake Tribune, June 26, 1890; Deseret Evening News, July 1, 1890.

59 Salt Lake Herald, July 4, 1890.

60 The Andersons had lived in Kansas City before moving to Ogden that year; see Ogden Standard-Examiner, May 8, 1931.

61 Ogden Standard Examiner, May 12, 1931.

62 Young, Mystick Krewe, 184–85. Abraham H. Cannon’s diary of July 8, 1890, records a telephone call from his half-brother Frank Cannon, which communicated “that John Q. was Rex II in the recent Mardi Gras Carnival until the night of the unmasking, when Gov. Thomas and O. W. Powers were so chagrined at the fact that they had sworn allegiance to a Cannon that a disturbance was threatened, and to avoid trouble he withdrew and Behan of Louisiana was substituted.” Abraham H. Cannon diaries, 1879–1895, July 8, 1890, MSS 62, L. Tom Perry Special Collections, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah. My thanks to Kenneth L. Cannon II for this information.

63 Ogden Daily Commercial, July 5, 1890; Ogden Standard- Examiner, May 12, 1931.

64 Young, Mystick Krewe, 188–89.

65 Salt Lake Herald, July 6, 1890.

66 Ogden Daily Commercial, July 5, 1890.

67 Young, Mystick Krewe, 190.

68 Syndicated identification of Cannon as Rex II was carried on July 5, 1890, by (among others) the Washington, D.C., Evening Star; Washington, D.C., Daily Critic; San Antonio Daily Light; and Grand Forks (ND) Daily Herald; and several more newspapers on July 6, 1890. The Salt Lake Herald showed little curiosity about the switch, reporting merely that “for some reason, however, known only to themselves, at the last moment, John Q. Cannon resigned and his place was filled by J. Henry Behan, of New Orleans” (July 6, 1890).

69 Young, Mystick Krewe, 185.

70 Salt Lake Herald, July 4, 1890.

71 Salt Lake Herald, July 6, 1890.

72 Ogden Standard-Examiner, May 10, 1931; Salt Lake Herald, July 6, 1890.

73 Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, August 2, 1890, 554. The Salt Lake Tribune of July 6, 1890, mentioned a “correspondent of Frank Leslie’s” at the Thursday war dance, so the rave review might have come from an outside observer rather than a hometown scribe.

74 Ogden Standard, July 8, 1890.

75 Ogden Standard, September 24, 1890, recorded that two Harvey lots sold to Captain Thomas Pickles; the Ogden Standard of March 29, 1892, described Pickles as “a large property owner in Ogden.” Pickles’s daughter, Josie, later married Harvey’s brother, Robert Smith Harvey. The Ogden Standard of June 27, 1890, first mentioned the Iliff College Hill. Its name came from Thomas Iliff, the superintendent of Methodist missionary work in Utah, and Ogden’s proposed (but never realized) Methodist University. See Salt Lake Herald, March 3, 7, 1889.

76 Ogden Standard-Examiner, May 8, 1931; Deseret Evening News, April 26, 1902; Ogden Standard, March 8, 1904.

77 Salt Lake Tribune, August 6, 1890; Sacramento Daily Record- Union, September 13, 1890.

78 Ogden Standard, July 8, 1890; Salt Lake Tribune, July 10, 1890.

79 Ogden Standard, August 7, 1890; Salt Lake Tribune, July 8, 1890. The retention of Levy was probably not formalized. Levy settled in Salt Lake City and for the next decade organized and designed many public entertainments there. See Salt Lake Herald, February 8, May 19, 1891, February 25, 1900.

80 Ogden Daily Commercial, April 6, 1890.

81 Salt Lake Tribune, September 20, 1890.

82 Pueblo (CO) Daily Chieftain, February 23, 1889.

83 Ogden Standard-Examiner, May 14, 1931.

84 Salt Lake Tribune, September 3, 1890. Boyle Furniture’s suit against the Monte Cristos and the S. J. Burt Company’s suit against Harvey were dismissed; Salt Lake Herald, March 11, 1891; Ogden Standard, April 9, 1891. Kennedy was probably referring to the California Fireworks Company’s suit against Harvey, which finally found Harvey liable for $866 after he had been gone from Ogden for two-and-a-half years. Ogden Standard, December 11, 1895; “Harvey’s Fireworks in Dispute,” Chicago Tribune, Apr. 27, 1896. Monte Cristo meetings were noted in Ogden Standard (semi-weekly ed.), September 10, 1890; Ogden Standard, November 9, 16, 1890.

85 Salt Lake Herald, July 11, 1890; Salt Lake Tribune, July 28, 1890 (citing Ogden Daily Union).

86 Ogden Standard, February 26, 1892; San Francisco Call, February 24, 1892.

87 New Orleans Daily Picayune, February 27, 1892; Report of the Proceedings of the [Fourth] Trans-Mississippi Commercial Congress (New Orleans: A. W. Hyatt, 1892), 165-68.

88 Ogden Standard, February 27, 1892.