So. Until August 14th or so, I’d never been to Salt Lake City before. My dad took me on a driving trip all over the Southwest when I was about 15, but he did his best to avoid populated Mormony areas; when I was about 22 I went on a family trip where the motel was on the Utah side but the casino was on the Nevada side, and that’s about it.
But on August 11th, my sisters and I loaded up the family van and my middle sister’s tiny Saturn and we, well, drove to Utah. She’s transferring to the University of Utah, and this presented the perfect chance for me to actually go and visit real live Mormonville, USA. Before we got there, the most Mormon places I’d ever been to were Palmyra and Nauvoo during their pageants, and the Polaris Amphitheater, when Pres. Hinckley told 7,000 of us (7,000! All Mormon!) that we were going to get a temple here in Ohio.
I was more or less expecting the LDS equivalent of Vatican City. Everyone dressed modestly, sparkling streets, lots and lots of men in suits but not looking as stressed as the guys I saw the year we visited New York. Subconsciously, I think I may have also been expecting mountains of Books of Mormon on display, and either choirs or loudspeakers blaring hymns and selections from the Children’s Songbook. Suffice to say, save for the men in suits, I did not get what I was expecting. It was a very educational experience, to say the least — let me now share some of the things I learned (of course, everyone here has probably been to Utah so many times it just seems normal to you:)
1. Mormons are absolute rubbish at theocracy.
I’m sorry, but it’s true. We’re just no good at it. I don’t even mean just SLC, which isn’t even very Mormon — I saw enough random not-very-celestial behavior (and advertising) in Provo to shake my faith in a Mormon-run Utah forever.
2. Utah Mormons get all the best Mormony stuff.
You guys get distribution centers, radio stations that play mostly LDS stuff (though not as much as I’d anticipated,) and LDS books on sale at Wal-Mart for starters. To say nothing of three temples along one 40-mile stretch of highway. And chapels that actually look like chapels. Dude, the Salt Lake City 10th ward building. Just look at it!
3. Mormons in Utah seem to be in a love affair with bronze and marble monuments.
Seriously. There is a miniature Joseph Smith and Brigham Young across from the SLC temple. There were at least three monuments placed in locations that were impossible to access unless you were willing to violate the laws of man and/or physics. I think SLC actually beats Boston in this regard, though it’s been a while since I’ve been to Boston.
4. There are aspects of Temple Square architecture that never quite get communicated to anyone in the Church outside of Utah.
The Tabernacle has a shiny roof. The SLC temple is small. There’s a wall around Temple Square! There are giant globe things carved into the exterior walls of the Church administration building!
5. I totally get why we have so many songs about mountains in the hymnal, now.
6. If I had been a pioneer, everyone in my wagon train would have died mysteriously in the night, and I’d have set up camp somewhere in the nice part of Nebraska. My gosh, Iowa is boring.
Seriously. I’m putting photos up at my DeviantArt and Facebook pages (and I’d stick some in here if I knew how to do it without breaking my Photobucket account,) but suffice to say that I have at least 900 miles’ worth of photos that are all interchangeable. I was nearly ready to kill my family after four days — the pioneers spend months on that same trail!
7. I get a serious kick out of free Books of Mormon in hotel rooms.
Of course, this is in part because I still can’t believe how many Mormons live in Utah.
8. I randomly decided to look for a particular microfilm while we were in SLC, which is clearly due to the influence of the Holy Spirit.
If I hadn’t looked while we were there, the nature of the index in question would have required me to order some $200 worth of films (over the course of at least two or three months) in order to get the one with all the Molloys on it. Did you know films cost $5 to order now? And that there are 30+ films worth of inadequately indexed “M” entries in the 1890-1950 grantor index for Middlesex Co., Mass.? Anyway, yay for free film access at the Family History Library.
9. They serve Coke at the Nauvoo Cafe in the Joseph Smith Memorial Building!
And so I turn out to be a slightly better Mormon than I thought I was.
10. They put a colony of Hawaiians in the middle of the salt flats!
We ran across this fact on the way to Wendover and that funny land speed record sign. Dude. It’s a barren wasteland. What were they thinking?
Those are the main things I can think of offhand. I’ll probably remember more stuff later — I was a bad girl and didn’t journal properly after the fourth day. Mostly I’m struck by how not-very-Mormon the whole place was. I was really expecting something a bit more Zion-like; instead it felt like a drier, higher altitude version of Orange County. Was this always a faulty expectation, or did things change over the course of the last hundred years or something?
I forgot to add: Church admin stuff is a lot more efficient when done in person. We fixed the misspelling on my patriarchal blessing and got a new copy ordered in less time than it took to figure out where the office we wanted to go to was. Comparing this to the 16-year gap between my baptism and the day I was finally entered into the Church’s records… yeah. And I could have gotten next year’s CSMP (Primary Program) guideline 4 months early, if I had felt like buying ten copies of it. Amazing.
Nice post, Sarah! You have captured the essence of Utah, neatly wrapped in a convenient blog post! 🙂
1: Not to state the obvious, but there are lots of non-Mormons around. If I recall SLC is less than half Mormon “officially.” And many Mormons aren’t active. (I remember quite a few drunk and stoned folks leaving parties from the apartment next to mine) Regarding advertising there are a couple of billboards I don’t like. One’s a clever one for post-Mormons. The other’s a rather poorly designed one for adult novelties down in Spanish Fork. Although I suppose your point is in a theocracy such things wouldn’t be there. I’m not sure. It’s hard to say. The whole theocracy/libertarian intersection is an odd one.
2. Can’t say much there. Although I think there’s more than 3 temples along I-15 from Provo to SLC. There should be 4. More if you allow an extra few miles to include Bountiful. Being able to easily buy garments sure is nice though. Overall for books though you’re better off shopping Amazon.
3. I actually thought Utah was lacking in statues. I guess that’s just me.
4. That carving on the Church Office Building is undoubtedly one of the worst atrocities of architecture there is in the Church. I can’t believe they fixed the Provo temple (although the whites don’t match) but not this.
5. Utah mountains rock. And the Uintas or the Tetons are only a couple of hours away.
6. All I can say is that great line from Unforgiven. “I thought you were dead.” “So did I. Then I found out I was just in Nebraska.”
7. I think there should be BoMs in most hotels. As missionaries we used to stock them up. It shouldn’t be just a Utah thing.
8. I’ve been here all these years and have never done genealogy using anything but a computer. I’m such a Philistine.
9. Now if we can just get diet Coke at BYU it’ll be a sign the millennium is around the corner.
10. I honestly never knew that. Is that the deserted down over by Dougway where they filmed The Hulk?
You have seen Mecca. Now you can be saved.
Finally, a visitor notices what I’ve been saying! I’ve told people before that Salt Lake is a little more worldly than they think, and that Utah Mormons aren’t quite as different as people outside the state believe (except for Utah Valley and some rural parts of the state, of course). My sister once visited some of her cousins in Logan for a week, and when she went to mutual with them the other youth in the ward said things like, “So you’re from Salt Lake. Have you ever seen anyone get shot before?”
The people who say the state’s a theocracy aren’t paying attention, even the locals who say it. Utah cast the deciding vote to repeal Prohibition in 1933, remember; one of the most disappointing times in Heber J. Grant’s life. Salt Lake City proper was only 40% LDS when I went on my mission almost ten years ago, and when I got home we had reached the point where Church members numbered less than 50% of the population for all of Salt Lake Valley. The state’s been Californicated for at least two decades now. Then there’s that nagging little prophetic statement by Heber C. Kimball, that someday Salt Lake will become one of the wickedest cities in the world….
Sarah, a few things to add:
1)I’ve been visiting Utah once a year since I was born, and the nice thing about Utah is that I have always fit in, both as a non-member and as a member. I have never felt uncomfortable (meaning, out of place, an outsider) there.
2)The desert is just not for me, but the mountains and the canyons rock.
3)Utah needs to do a much better job at controlling growth. More open spaces, more parks are needed. WAAAY more. It is one big suburb from Spanish Fork to Brigham City as you drive along I-15. Yuck! You are right, Orange County, but without the ocean.
4)All you people in Utah, appreciate your Deseret Books and other LDS bookstores. Yes, you can order on-line, but it is much more fun to browse. The nearest LDS bookstore is 300 miles away from Miami. 🙁
5)All you people in Utah, appreciate that you can get modest women’s clothing easily there. This is literally impossible in Miami. It drives my wife crazy. She shopped for a wedding dress in Miami for months and could not find anything modest (needed for the temple). The summer after the wedding, we went to Orem, and there, one of the first stores we saw, was an entire store with modest wedding dresses.
6)Dude, I would love to be able to do my home teaching with people who lived within a few blocks of my house.
7)Just remember, you can make you own little Zion wherever you live. 🙂
“More open spaces, more parks are needed. WAAAY more. It is one big suburb from Spanish Fork to Brigham City as you drive along I-15.” For open space, get off I-15 at the next exit, whichever that may be, and drive west a couple miles. But then you run into your lack of enjoyment of desert.
Iosepa is on the way to Wendover, and, umm, you’d be better off following the directions on the billboards than asking me. I never was able to figure out how to get to the “This is the Place” monument. Anyway, Iosepa has its very own exit sign, though owing to my previous experiences in the desert I was frankly too scared to get off the freeway and explore.
I only counted the temples I could actually see, personally, from the freeway, while driving. It wouldn’t really surprise me if you said there were fifty temples in that forty mile stretch!
witteafval, in rural Ohio, when people found out I was going to attend Ohio State, I was (repeatedly) told, “Don’t go on High Street! You’ll get raped!!” High Street is one of the two main thoroughfares to the city, and, amongst other things, is where the Art, Music, Dance, Economics, Education, and Materials Science Buildings are all located (and the student union, and two of the dorms I lived in.) ^_^
Geoff: The modest clothing! Thank you! The Wal-Mart and Smiths we found (by the way, why does SLC hide all the grocery stores?) had TONS of long-sleeve, not-hussy-looking outfits. I bet the David’s Bridals out there have sleeves for their dresses, too. Sigh.
Genealogy by computer is awesome (and the somewhat confused missionary who did our tour at the Conference Center suggested that the building they’re putting up across the street will be used for digitization,) but a) there are some things you just can’t get online yet, and b) there is something really cool about reading things in peoples’ original handwriting. The only “original handwriting” things I’ve gotten over the computer so far were my great-grandfathers’ WWI draft cards. Which was pretty cool, and actually gave us the address we needed to look for in Sommerset. But land records, wills, etc., are a lot harder to come by — Sommerset itself hasn’t even sent over all their land records to the Church, period. I have to swing by on my next trip to Boston and actually look at the original books, scarily enough. Court records (criminal, etc.) are even worse; often they’re not even indexed. One case could be in four different books, depending on how long they took to resolve the issue.
OH! For my next trip to Utah, I want to find the biggest Deseret Book possible. The ones in Provo and next to Temple Square seemed small (at least, by comparison to the Distribution Center and most national book retailers.) Anyone know of a giant Deseret Book (or Seagull, even?)
I was a ward and stake clerk on the west side of SLC. Member numbers were moderate, but activity rates were dismal. Tithing was nil. Home teaching was nil. Welfare numbers were thru the roof.
At one time our bishopric consisted of an insane (and I can say that now that I’ve moved) elderly bishop, a guy who lived in Wendover (over 100 miles away), and a guy who had to work on Sundays. The bishop was the bishop, I think, because he was one of the only members within ward boundaries that owned a house and was financially squared away.
The guy from Wendover lived within ward boundaries at one point, but had moved. The area authorities gave him explicit permission to retain his records there and hold his calling. This guy pretty much ran the ward. The second counselor was a great guy and a good member, but had to work on Sundays. In the 3 or so years he was counselor, he had only been to church a few times.
Anybody in the ward that wasn’t insane, inactive, under investigation for something, disfellowshipped, or homeless held 3 or 4 callings. I was ward clerk, financial clerk, membership clerk, Sunday School President, and Sunday School teacher.
This ward was the ward where Thomas Monson grew up. There were old ladies living there that still called him Tommy.
Outside of Temple Square, Salt Lake ain’t the place everybody thinks it is.
A comedian sings a song called Driving Through Iowa on I-80. The lyrics go:
Mississippi River
Davenport
Corn, corn, corn, corn
Corn, corn, corn
“whats that smell?”
Corn, corn, corn
Iowa City
Corn, corn, corn, corn
“Look, a tree!”
Corn, corn, corn, Des Moines
Corn, corn, corn, corn, corn
“Theres that smell again”
Corn, corn, corn
Council Bluffs, Missouri River
The US Supreme Court and the US Congress wouldn’t allow Utah to do the ‘theocracy’ thing if it wanted to. Utah is what you get when Deseret is assimilated by a somewhat benevolent foreign power.
I still say this is urban legend, but my liberatarian non-member friend swears it’s true, that during the 2000 Libertarian Party Convention, the delegation from Utah announced themselves as “The Delegation from the Great State of Utah, where the separation between Church and State is 2 blocks!”
Adam, I’ve held for quite some time that the entire inter-mountain West is essentially a series of American colonial holdings.
This is the Place is right down the street from the U, off Sunnyside. I’ve lived in SLC for three weeks and have found:
1. I know more Mormons here with boats or access to boats than I did in coastal Washington state.
2. Institute here allows for teacher sanctioned making fun of BYU. AND we get a fireside with Elder Holland next month!
3. Even the skateboard punks have been really polite.
4. It’s less fun being in a class half full of Mormons than being the only Mormon. (I think if the annoying comment guy was really a good Mormon, he wouldn’t be so annoying.) Though class is fun anyways because it’s grad school.
5. HBO is free in the U’s on campus housing so I can now watch Big Love. Great programme.
6. I dig the mountains but it freaks me out that people are already talking about skiing.
7. People here drive like maniacs.
8. The first Sunday I was here the Bishop counseled us all to set marriage dates by the end of the year so we could dissolve the ward.
I think he wants to spend more time on his boat.
The exit for Iosepa is in the salt flats, but the actual site is about twenty miles south in Skull Valley. The Salt Flats wouldn’t have sustained any kind of agriculture, but Iosepa did for about thirty years.