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Show 72 During the forty-six years Utah was a territory, Congress repeatedly redrew the Western map, giving Utah's land 10 states and territories more aligned with the government's ideas of what it meant to be American. 196 When Zion National Park was created, twenty-three years had passed since statehood, and many outsiders still looked at Mormons with suspicion. These suspicions perpetuated caricatures of Utah and Utahns. The New York Times article reporting the creation of Zion National Park revealed how some outsiders perceived Utahns. The writer described the reaction of people living along the Virgin River to tourists traveling to Zion: To the amazement of the settlers, they appeared awe-struck at the tremendous canyon, with its multi-colored, 3,000-foot cliffs, its mountain peaks of dazzling white and the tremendous vista of surrounding skyline. The old Mormons, there since Brigham Young's time, and their children, who had been born and raised in the midst of the region's grandeur, could not understand it. Most of them had never been out as far as the railroad, or seen anything else. To them it was only the ordinary every-day world. "Is this any different from the rest of the country? Is it really wonderful?" they asked. Tourists assured 1hem it was, and left to tell of what they had secn. 197 When the director of national parks declared that "Zion national park [sic] is fully up to the high standards of the national parks of the country," the Tribune reported tha1 "the official stamp of approval of the most eminent park authority in the United States I% William P. Mac Kinnon, '''Like Splitting a Man up His Backbone': The Territorial Oismembenncnt of Utah, 1850-1896," Utah Historical Q11arterly 7 1 (Spring 2003): l 00-24. 197 Eyre Powell, "New National Park, Zion Canyon," New York Times, December 2 1, 1919, 48. For a complete account of the struggle for statehood, see Edward Leo Lyman, Political Deliverance: The Mormon Q11estfor Utah Statchood(Urbana, IL: University of ltlinois Press, 1986). |
