XII
WESTWARD HO!
Everyone had the same disconsolate story to tell of the route through Idaho and Nevada to the Coast. (I often have wondered why the expression “The Coast” means but one place, the Pacific Coast. We have a few thousand miles of sea-coast on the Atlantic, but no one ever speaks of going East “to the Coast.”) All the motor parties we met that came that way to the park advised us to go north from Gardiner, over the Yellowstone Trail to Spokane and Seattle, and then down the coast to San Francisco. One man said, “I wouldn’t take five thousand dollars to go back over those roads!” We had practically decided to go the northern route, but the forest fires were still raging in that section, and many cars were turned back. It was Hobson’s choice; we had no alternative.
Our car had been left in the garage at Mammoth. On leaving we found there was no charge for the four days’ storage. It seemed like home to be back in our own car again. We followed the same route that we took to Old Faithful until we reached Gibbon Falls, then turned west along the Madison River to the western gate at Yellowstone, and so out of the park into Idaho.
If there are worse roads anywhere on earth than in Idaho, I hope we may never see them! It had grown hot, and every mile of the way was hotter. Sand, dust, ruts three feet deep, and chuck-holes at every turn! In contrast to the roads in the park, that state is a nightmare! By the time we had reached Ashton (123 miles), we wished we had never seen Idaho. The Kirkbride Hotel was wretched, with only one bathroom for the establishment, no café, and dirty beyond expression. The town has but one street, a typical cowboy town, as primitive as possible. The hotel manager asked if we carried our own bedding! “Do we look as if we did?” No reply. We probably did—and worse. It seems that the camping parties from the park often brought things beside bedding with them! At ten that night we found some food, in a wretched Chinese restaurant.
The next day was hot and dusty, and there were more bad roads; but we knew that we should find a good hotel at Pocatello, with private bath and decent food. We went through Idaho Falls and the Blackfoot Reservation.
An incident occurred here that would have made Toodles green with envy. We were taking advantage of our first stretch of good road in two days, and going at a lively speed. Away ahead, in the middle of the road, stood a solitary figure. We sounded our horn. The figure did not budge. Then we blew a blast that would have raised Rameses II and came to a stop a few feet from a man. He proved to be a “real honest-to-gosh,” as they say out here, Indian chief. His frame was massive and his face square-jawed, of a copper-bronze hue. A crimson kerchief, earrings, and beads, with ordinary trousers and shirt, completed his costume. He stood there like a dethroned emperor. With a dignified majesty, he waved his arm and said, “Take me home.” I turned to look at him as he sat, with folded arms, alone in the tonneau, with an air that plainly said, “I owned all this once; it is all mine.” He told us that he was chief of the Shoshone tribe, and owned 250 acres; that he rented two of his ranches and lived on the one “where the trees were, a mile up the road.” The land was under high cultivation, with fine buildings. When we let him out he just waved us on, saying, “Me good American.” I wondered if at heart he really were, or if he knew that he had to be. We often saw Indian women on the roadside selling garden truck—always with a stolid expression, and seldom a smile. If you spoke to them, their invariable rejoinder was “You bet” (pronounced “U-bit”). This seems to be the prevailing expression in the West.
The Yellowstone Hotel in Pocatello is very good, and crowded, like all of the Western hotels.
The heat was intense, even at nine in the morning, and Ogden, Utah, 165 miles south. “Are the roads good?” we asked the clerk. Smiling, he replied, “I am from New York.” At Dayton, we crossed the border into Utah. Before us lay a cement road as white as snow. We could hardly believe our eyes. “Woman, bow down and worship!” the bird-man exclaimed. Regardless of speed laws, we flew over that road for miles, through beautiful towns and avenues of Lombardy poplars. We remarked that every little bungalow was surrounded by these tall trees. “The Mormons must have planted one for each wife and child.” The farms were fertile and well cultivated, and for miles the peach orchards lined the sides of the road, the trees laden with fruit. At each station wagons were unloading hundreds of crates ready for shipment. Tomatoes and melons, also, are raised in abundance. Brigham is a clean, attractive city, with peach-trees growing in every garden and on the roadside. They celebrate an annual “Peach day” in September. “Every visitor will receive a peach,” the posters read. I bought a basket, of a dozen or more, for ten cents. Here we became acquainted with the red grasshopper. We thought we had left all of these little pests in Fargo; but here they were as lively as ever and as red as strawberries. And that reminds me—we have had delicious strawberries for weeks (in August).
The roads were so wonderful that we forgot our aching backbones and enjoyed every mile of the way into Ogden, to the Reed Hotel. We spent two days here, as there was much of interest to see and do. The hotel is old, but well kept up. We had a room large enough to hold a convention in, with a smaller bedroom and bath adjoining, and eight large windows altogether. Again the hotel was crowded. The railroad strike was on in California, and people were marooned in every city; only local trains were running.
The next day we drove to Salt Lake City, a distance of about thirty-five miles. Of all the Western cities, we were most anxious to see the capital of Utah. And now a joke at my expense! I asked the clerk in the hotel where we could get the steamer for Salt Lake City.
“What steamer?” he asked in surprise.
“Can’t you go there by boat?”
“Say, lady, I guess you come from the East.”
I admitted the truth of that.
“Ever been West before?”
This time a negative.
“Don’t you know that the boat has never been built that will float on Salt Lake?”
I thought of “Cowboy Charlie” and his book of “fool questions.”
Salt Lake is a wonderful city. Whatever you may think of the Mormons, you have to admit that they are a far-sighted, industrious, and executive people. Your chief interest centers about the Temple Block, a ten-acre square surrounded by a stone and adobe wall twelve feet high. The grounds are a beautiful park. The Bureau of Information is a fine large building, where literature is distributed to three hundred thousand visitors yearly. As many as thirty-nine states and seven foreign countries had been represented on the registry in one day. “No fees charged, and no donations received,” was the watchword on these grounds. We wondered how the place was supported, and were told that there were no pew-rentals in any of their churches, and no collections made, nor were there any contribution-boxes found there.
“The Mormons observe the ancient law of tithing, as it was given to the Children of Israel, by which a member pays one-tenth of his income, as a free-will offering, for the support of the Church.”
In the Temple Block is the Assembly Hall, a semi-Gothic structure of gray granite, with a seating capacity of two thousand, often used for public lectures and concerts by any denomination. The Tabernacle is a world-famed auditorium, seating eight thousand people, noted for its remarkable construction and acoustic properties. The wooden roof, self-supporting, rests upon buttresses of red sandstone, twelve feet apart, the whole circumference of the building. These pillars support wooden arches ten feet in thickness and spanning 150 feet. The arches, of a lattice-truss construction, are put together with wooden pins, there being no nails or iron of any kind used in the framework. The building was erected between 1863 and 1870, and was nearly completed before the railroads reached Utah. All the imported material had to be hauled with ox-teams from the Missouri River. The original cost was three hundred thousand dollars, exclusive of the cost of the organ. Our guide, a lady, told us that their pioneer leader, Brigham Young, had planned and supervised the erection of the building. “He was a glazier and cabinet-maker by trade, but had been schooled chiefly by hardship and experience. He not only designed this and the Temple, but he built an equally wonderful commonwealth; one which is unique among the Middle and Western states for law and order, religious devotion and loyalty.” She told us that their church had established headquarters successively in New York, Ohio, Missouri, and Illinois, and, after the martyrdom of Joseph and Hyrum Smith, in 1846, it was obliged to seek refuge in the Rocky Mountains. They have no professional or paid preachers; any member of the congregation may be called upon to address them. We were interested to hear of their women. “They are the freest, most intensely individualistic women on earth, having three organizations of their own. The Relief Society has thirty thousand members, publishes a monthly periodical, has up-to-date offices, owns many ward-houses, and spends thousands of dollars yearly for charity and education. The Young Ladies’ Mutual Improvement Association was organized in 1869 by Brigham Young, chiefly among his own daughters.” (Some family party!) This association now numbers over thirty thousand girls. It also edits and controls a magazine. Besides these activities, there is the Primary Association, with many thousands of children marshaled under its banner. We remembered that the women have full suffrage in Utah, and were not surprised to hear of their ward conferences and public speakers. This did not sound much like the “down-trodden slaves” that many consider the Mormon women to be.
Most prominent among the structures in the “Block” is the Temple, began less than six years after the pioneers found here a desolate sagebrush wilderness. Before railroads were built to the granite quarries, twenty miles southeast of the city, the huge blocks of stone were hauled by ox-teams, requiring at times four yoke of oxen four days to transport a single stone! Forty years were required in its completion, and the structure stands as a monument to the untiring energy of these people. Its cost, in all, was four million dollars. Visitors have never been admitted to the Temple since its dedication in 1893. “It was not designed as a place of public assembly,” our guide informed us; “it is to us a holy place devoted to sacred ordinances, and open only to our own church members in good standing.” I wish that space permitted me to quote all that we heard of their marriages, and even divorces, and of their many quaint customs.
The figure surmounting the Temple is twelve feet in height, of hammered copper covered with gold leaf, and represents the angel Moroni, the son of Mormon, the writer of the Book of Mormon, which “is an inspired historical record of the ancient inhabitants of the American continent, corresponding to the Old Testament.” Mormon, who lived about 400 A. D., was one of the last of their prophets, and into the Book of Mormon compiled the traditions which had come to him through generations. This is not the Mormon Bible, for they use the King James translation that our Christian churches use.
The Sea-Gull Monument is also in the “Block.” It commemorates a historic incident of pioneer days, and was designed by Mahonri M. Young, a grandson of Brigham. A granite base of twenty tons, resting on a concrete foundation, supports a granite column fifteen feet high, surmounted by a granite globe. Two bronze sea-gulls rest upon this ball. The birds weigh five hundred pounds, and the stretch of their wings is eight feet. On three sides of the base, in relief sculpture, the sea-gull story is told, which, briefly, is this: In 1848 this was the earliest settlement in the Rocky Mountains, and less than a year old, consisting of a camp, a log and mud fort enclosing huts, tents and wagons, with about eighteen hundred people. Their handful of crops the first year, mainly potatoes, having failed, they were looking for a good harvest the second year, or they would face starvation. In the spring of 1848 five thousand acres of land were under cultivation in the valley, nine hundred with winter wheat. Then came the plague of crickets (our friends the grasshopper family). “They rolled in legions down the mountain sides, attacking the young grain and destroying the crops.” Men, women and children fought them with brooms, with fire, and even dug ditches and turned water into the trenches. It looked hopeless; their crops seemed doomed, when great flocks of sea-gulls swept down on the crickets and devoured them. The Mormons compare the incident to the saving of Rome by the cackling geese.
We heard an amusing story of how Brigham Young came by his name. Originally his surname was “Brigham.” Once, when his agent returned with some prospective brides, Brigham, looking them over and finding them too old, exclaimed, “Go find others, and bring ’em young.”
The Utah Hotel is one of the finest in the country. It is owned and run by the Mormons, and it does them great credit. We dined in the roof-garden, which compares favorably with that of any hotel in New York. You look off to the Wasatch range of mountains, the beautiful fertile valley, and the great Salt Lake, beyond which lies the desert.
The executive staff of the Mormon Church has one of the finest buildings in the city. The interior is paneled with native marbles and woods and represents a fortune.
Returning to Ogden, we spent the next day visiting Ogden Canyon, a short trip of twenty miles. We drove through groves of walnut trees laden with nuts. Making a sharp turn on a good macadam road, you wind through a deep canyon gorgeous with autumn foliage, a beautiful sight. The river bank is lined with vine-covered bungalows, almost hidden from view. The canyon streams are noted for the brook-trout fishing. A Boston chap told us that he and two other boys caught ninety pounds in three days. We lunched at the Hermitage, the best-known resort near Ogden. It is built of logs, in the wildest part of the canyon. The house was decorated with ferns and mountain wild flowers, as artistically as a private home. We certainly enjoyed the brook-trout dinner ($1.50) of fish caught that day in front of the hotel. Of course, this cannot be compared to Yellowstone Canyon, but it is very beautiful and well worth the trip from Ogden.
That evening we pored over maps. There was no route across the desert that was good—only some were worse than others. Everyone advised us to take the “Pike’s Peak Ocean-to-Ocean Highway,” which follows the Southern Pacific Railroad (at intervals), and is considered a “safety-first” way.
I never see that word “highway” that I don’t want to laugh! A “cow-path” would more nearly describe any that we traveled in Idaho or Nevada (not to mention a few others).