| Description |
In 1894, John Hyrum Koyle began digging the Dream Mine, on a mountaintop in central Utah. Koyle, a Mormon bishop, had been shown where to dig, he said, by Moroni, the same heavenly messenger who had led Mormon founder Joseph Smith to unearth the golden plates. Moroni visited Koyle in a dream and showed him nine enormous caverns below the mountain, containing countless piles of gold. Moroni told Koyle that the gold would remain hidden in the caves until an unspecified time preceding the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. At that moment of chaos, Koyle and his followers would unearth the gold and it would support the financially-troubled Mormon Church through the Last Days. This thesis investigates the nature of belief in the Dream Mine, which remains fervent more than 100 years later. Although their dreams are perpetually deferred, believers tap into a rich vein of folklore that runs through Mormon cosmology. Over the past thirty years, the Dream Mine has enabled believers to maintain a psychic link to a magical past, as their church adapts to a changing, modern world. This thesis will consider how Dream Mine belief has evolved in a changing economic, political, and religious landscape, and demonstrate that the faithful find sustenance in the Mormon past while simultaneously embracing modern worldviews that extend beyond mainstream Mormonism. |
