A History of Salt Lake County

And Now, In Salt Lake County, 1980-1990

T h e 1980s in Salt Lake County carried all the earmarks of a hard and heady adolescence. In a decade of complex decisions and striking contrasts, valley leaders eagerly welcomed exotic investment yet shut out the largest military project ever. Near the decade's start and near its end, scientific discoveries beckoned worldwide media to the University of Utah campus where a plastic heart beat in a human chest and fusion experiments promised the energy source of the future; neither event, however, met the financial or practical expec-tations of discoverers. Meanwhile various areas of the county sought incorporation, most of them unsuccessfully. While Draper and Bluffdale accomplished their goal in 1978, Granger, Hunter, and Chesterfield battled to become the new and struggling West Valley City. Overall, Salt Lake County entered the 1980s snugly aligned with national politics and trends and strongly supported Ronald Reagan's eight years in the White House. Former Salt Lake City mayor Jake Garn led the United States Senate's banking committee when it scotched his proposed amendment and loosened regulations over financial institutions, unfurling a wild arc of lending, investment, and business expansion nationwide, echoed locally. National social trends and issues matured within the valley as women achieved unprece-dented landmarks in public and professional arenas, and as minority populations grew, organized, and wove new threads into the fabric of the valley's cultural life. Throughout, the county continued to draw national media atten-tion even without the public relations efforts so much a part of the decade. Extreme weather became unsolicited news, and so did mur-der mysteries in real life. Television newscasts caught Salt Lake County residents heaving sandbags into extensive dikes that turned floodwaters into impromptu rivers, and lining up to record prints of their children's hands and feet for fear of kidnap and murder. The lines of Scottish verse quoted by David 0. McKay in what seemed to have been simpler times gained an ironic poignance: "0 would some Power the gift to give us/ To see ourselves as others see us!"' Repeatedly, the media offered valley dwellers precisely that opportu-nity. In fact, events in Salt Lake County between 1974 and 1990 inspired at least eighteen non-fiction books and a half dozen televi-sion feature films.' The crux of development by "outsiders" opened the decade as massive new possibilities promised a gigantic inflow of cash. In 1979 President Jimmy Carter's administration had announced a huge national defense project, the MX missile system, to be built in the desert west of Salt Lake County. While the tons of concrete poured into the looped missile racetrack would lie at a distance, valley boos-terism around the MX was high; the enormous venture was expected to spur gas and oil exploration, as well as energize employment and spending. In many ways, the challenge to manage a giant growth spurt seemed a welcome The range of concerns the MX inspired, however, varied from ecological to fearful, because the missile system would not only tear up the desert but become a natural target for enemy missiles if war came. Some argued that Utahns unknowingly and unwillingly had sacrificed plenty to national defense due to the high cancer rates and livestock losses attributed to nuclear testing in Nevada. Governor Scott Matheson who challenged the military studies on the MX pro-ject's local impact would later die of cancer that he attributed to prac-ticing law decades earlier downwind from nuclear test sites. Nevertheless, the MX seemed an inevitable challenge and wind-fall until in 1981 the LDS church shocked the nation by officially opposing placement of the MX system in Utah. The church's posture bucked decades of valley partnership with military and defense industry and effectively halted the enormous project-a dramatic contrast to the federal government's attitude toward church defiance a century before. Still, the church's action did not go uncriticized. The New York Times called the official statement "disturbingly sanctimo-nious" as the church decried the arms race and sought to protect its Indeed the church's action reflected Brigham Young's defensive stance regarding outsiders more than it resembled the twentieth-century's patriotic support of the military-industrial complex. The anti-MX pitch to the Special Affairs Committee had been led by University of Utah law professor Edwin B. Firmage, Young's great-grandson and grandson to Hugh B. Brown, a counselor to McKay. A former aide to Senator Hubert Humphrey, Firmage had participated in the Geneva disarmament talks in the 1960s. Now he argued that supporting the MX missile system would escalate the international arms race; thus it conflicted with both LDS and biblical tradition. , "Our fathers came to this western area to establish a base from which to carry the gospel of peace to the peoples of the earth," read the church's statement of opposition. Deferentially, Reagan moved the MX plans to Wyoming, but the missile system was never built.5 Even as the MX plan was rejected, a development dream of exotic and foreign entrepreneurs was enthusiastically embraced. Three Saudi Arabian businessmen and arms dealers, Adnan, Essam, and Asil Khashoggi, proposed to essentially remake Salt Lake City as a corpo-rate center through transforming, over a period of ten years, its run-down northwest sector with condominium towers, office towers, even a bell tower. Trolleys would link Temple Square to the Triad Center, as they called it, where an Omnimax movie theater, modeled after one at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas would attract crowd^.^ As the Khashoggis' plans spiraled far beyond the original attrac- tion (renovating the Devereaux Mansion), the Historic Landmark Committee protested that the Triad development presented "a par-ody of this significant historic building, . . . [as] a gratuitous market-ing ~bject."W~ hen the LDS-owned Bonneville International Corporation considered relocating its corporate and broadcasting facilities to the Triad Center, board members from outside Utah raised concerns about the frequency with which the Khashogghi name rose in congressional and financial probes. None of these objections, however, squelched the local enthusiasm for the Triad development and what seemed a prodigious relationship with the Khashoggis in the future. Actually, the Khashoggis' flirtation with Salt Lake City had begun in 1975 after Bill Gay, a Mormon who worked for eccentric Nevada billionaire Howard Hughes, drew their attention to the valley's poten-tial. First, Triad Utah built the International Center and industrial park on property near the airport adjacent to land owned by the LDS church. The church maintained a staunch interest in airport devel-opment and the fortunes of airlines as shown in a First Presidency statement supporting the industry's plea for deregulation. The area was annexed to the city, enhancing its value, and in 1983 Western Airlines relocated its corporate headquarters to Salt Lake City8 Meanwhile, by the early 1980s, the LDS First Presidency suffered increasingly from age and infirmity. N. Eldon Tanner, credited with the church's corporate success, was afflicted with Parkinson's disease. Apostle Gordon B. Hinckley became an unusual third counselor and was soon the presidency's most active member. Non-LDS business-man Emmanuel A. (Manny) Floor served as liaison between the Khashoggis and the LDS general authorities. He also convinced the Bonneville International board to relocate both its corporate offices and KSL to Triad, and Broadcast House on North Temple and Third West streets rose rapidly. In addition, the church sold six acres of land to Triad, enabling the project. The church also lent publicity to Triad with a glowing cover story in the weekly church section of the Deseret News and a slide show narrated by publisher Wendell Ashton which he presented at a national meeting of the Cities Congress on Roads to Reco~ery.~ Other private concerns became deeply involved as well. Travelers Insurance Companies of Hartford, Connecticut, for instance, invested $70 million in various Triad America subsidiaries, including $38 million for the Triad Center itself.'' Three copper-colored, reflective towers rose at North Temple and Third West streets in a 560,000 square-foot complex that cradled an outdoor amphitheater and an ice-skating rink between ground-floor restaurants and retail stores. Then with the Devereaux Mansion restored and the office towers gracing the skyline, the Khashoggis dis-appeared from the Salt Lake project in 1987, abandoning a figurative tower of unpaid backers, investors, debts, and costs. Deseret News business editor Max B. Knudson described the most involved of the brothers, Adnan Khashoggi, in a front page article as a "billionaire golden goose" who now threatened to fly off "and take the golden egg with him." Knudson continued, "Khashoggi hasn't really flown off with the golden egg, of course," noting that the International Center and Triad Center brought thousands of jobs and millions in revenue to the valley and state. "But those figures are cold comfort to the hundreds of Utahns who have been left holding the bag because of Khashoggi's construction loans to brick layers, car-penters, painters, and hundreds of other workmen and suppliers who have never been paid. . . ."" Defiantly, Khashoggi told the newspaper that if pressed, he would simply file bankruptcy. He claimed, "Without us, the city would be dead a long time ago!"12 Long after the Khashoggis disappeared from the Salt Lake scene, however, the Triad Center remained, gradually recovering financial stability and hosting a variety of enterprises and community events. Change was afoot in the county at large during the same years. County government itself declined participation in restoring the City-County Building (at a cost of $33 million between 1985-88) and moved to the new Salt Lake County Government Center, consisting of two spacious structures on the former Salt Lake County General Hospital site at Twenty-First South and State streets. Within the new complex, meeting rooms, lobbies, and plazas welcomed various com-munity conferences and events. Meanwhile the drive to incorporate gained impetus in the south and west areas of the county. The idea was immediately controver- sial. Although incorporation would not affect county-wide services such as parks and recreation, it would withdraw revenue from the municipal services fund. Salt Lake County used this fund to provide the services associated with city life to residents in the unincorpo-rated area-who, in essence, comprised the largest "city" in the county. Also, new cities either would have to contract with the county to provide those services-as Salt Lake City did for animal control, for instance-or must supply revenue to provide garbage pickup, police and fire protection, and other services independently. The county commission decided whether the proposed city possessed this capa-bility, turning down the Taylorsville-Bennion area in 1983, 1988, and 1989. Magna tried and failed in 1984, and Cottonwood did the same a year later. The incorporation movement that centered in the Granger- Hunter Community Council became the largest battle with county resistance led at first by Commissioner William Dunn. Plans were tabled when a special legislative session imposed a moratorium on annexation, incorporation, or consolidation plans. Meanwhile the Salt Lake County Council of Governments, comprised of the valley's mayors and county commissioners, designed a master plan for ten or eleven cities, all served by the county in much the same way as at pre-sent. The annexation to Salt Lake City of the Brickyard Plaza at 3300 South between Eleventh and Thirteenth East streets effectively upset the strategy. The $30 million plaza opened in July 1980 with a cere-mony led by Governor Matheson and Mayor Ted Wilson. The plaza, built on a site owned for many years by Interstate Brick Company, featured Mervyn's department store, Ernst Home Center, and Block's clothing store. Not an enclosed mall, Brickyard's nine buildings were connected by covered walkways. By the time the plaza opened, sev-eral major enterprises were completed including a condominium with more than one hundred units, a 65,000 square-foot Harmon's grocery store, and an American Savings and Loan building.') Mere word of Brickyard's annexation precipitated a series of events well before the opening, however. Immediately Granger- Hunter councilman Walter Ewe11 announced that he would submit an incorporation petition, seeking a mid-September 1978 election for a city of roughly 50,000 people. County employees, however, reached the county attorney's office first and captured the election date for a rather nebulous Bonneville City proposal which would essentially unite all the unincorporated areas. Granger-Hunter sued, and so did Draper, which, like Bluffdale, had plans of its own. They alleged that the county had failed to provide proper notice of its rules of accep-tance. Although the media closely covered the heated dispute, most residents were apathetic even within the affected areas." Amid political battle on the westside, Henry Price, a justice of the peace and a former deputy commander at Fort Douglas, emerged as a leader. He argued in favor of incorporating and consolidating tax revenues so that west valley residents would not continue to pay for parks and recreation facilities on the east side, such as a newly opened ice skating and swimming pool complex in Cottonwood Heights. The savings, Price maintained, would improve police protection and establish a low-cost government that could contract for many needed services. Officially, county officials remained neutral but questioned whether the plan would not inevitably lead to a steep rise in taxes-the fear that had long prevented the formation of new cities. Most daunting was the threat that the new city would need to establish an independent school district required for any population of 60,000. A February 1978 election defeated the drive, and the school district fac-tor was felt to be the deciding factor. The west valley effort then sparked a drive to combine Salt Lake City and County governments, led by former governors J. Bracken Lee and Calvin Rampton with the League of Women Voters on the front lines. This battle completely overshadowed the September vote for Bonneville City which had frozen unincorporated-area bound-aries and prevented annexations but remained a rather vague plan to unite unincorporated communities. Both unification and Bonneville City were defeated, even as Draper and Bluffdale achieved incorpo-ration. l5 Five days before a vote on another unification proposal, west val-ley leaders again pressed their plan upon county commissioners. The delegation was led by house majority leader Norman H. Bangerter, flanked by westside legislators on one side and by Price and incoming council president Richard B. Evertsen on the other. Bangerter stressed that the area's residents should be allowed to decide their own future. When Dunn again brought up the issue of the tax base and a possible lapse in services, he chided the delegates for not showing more concern for residents' needs. Bangerter bristled, emphasizing that their priority was the welfare of the westside communities. He invited the commissioners to join in solving problems in ways that reflected the residents' perspective. A few days later, the Urban County proposal which resembled the Bonneville City plan, failed by a 5-1 margin in Hunter, 4-1 in Granger, and 2-1 in Redwood? The lag in conveniences, facilities, and services increasingly irked westsiders. Only in the 1970s did the Utah Transit Authority instigate efficient bus service, linking the westside with the eastside. The county had been gradually lining the most dangerous streets with sidewalks-streets that growth had transformed from country lanes to bustling arteries-even as the state widened both 3500 and 4700 South streets to four lanes; however, many roads had no sidewalks at all. Most westside schools bulged with students while some eastside neighborhoods found empty classrooms the result of maturing neighborhoods. Granite School District had announced in 1978, in fact, that it would stop building schools in an effort to save money for overcrowding in Hunter. In the meantime, the school board con-sidered busing Hunter students east to the half-filled Skyline High School on Wasatch Boulevard. By the 1979-80 school year, Valley Junior High had the most students statewide, while Eisenhower, West Lake, and Kennedy-all in the proposed incorporation area-ranked in the top five. Meanwhile legislation removed the obstruction of the proposed city needing to provide its own school district. The flurry of plans, politics, studies, and court actions continued as the pressure for west valley incorporation grew. On 8 January 1980, the county commission announced that West Vdey City would stand for election as a second-class city (one with more than 60,000 people). Candidates filed for the offices of mayor, commissioners, and auditor, as South Salt Lake, Murray, and Sandy endorsed the incorporation effort and offered their support, followed shortly by West Valley City was incorporated as the state's third largest city by a ninety-vote margin in February 1980. It s u ~ v eidts first impoverished years to gain population, prosperity, and clout by the early 1990s. (Jack Monson-Deseret News) Salt Lake City. Each turn of fortune was closely covered by the weekly Green Sheet, but the valley's major newspapers also followed the effort. When almost daily coverage gave way to series in the Sunday morning newspapers, west valley boosters counted it a sign of respect. Meanwhile county officials continued to advise caution. On 26 February 1980, voters decided the two-year battle, but only by a ninety-vote margin. The count showed 5,179 voters sup-porting incorporation and 5,099 against. Hearing rumors of voting irregularities, Commissioner Bart Barker insisted on a recount, and the lead dropped to seventy votes. Despite the narrow victory, West Valley City was born as the state's third largest city, formed from por-tions of Granger, Hunter, and Chesterfield. Henry H. Price became its first mayor, Renee W. MacKay and Jerry L. Wagstaff were elected city commissioners, and M. Gerry Ashman became auditor.17 Less than twenty-four hours after victory, however, two commu-nity leaders and supporters of the new city, 0. Thayne Acord and Lorraine Acord, were robbed, bound, and shot to death in their Granger home by teenage assailants. The loss not only shocked the valley but presented the new city with a practical disadvantage; as owner of the Golden Eagles hockey team and a prominent civic leader, Thayne Acord had been a valuable ally within the financial community. Then almost as immediately as the murders, a drive ensued to disincorporate. It came to a vote on 8 July 1980, one week after the new city was scheduled to begin operating. The vote failed and city functions began in a converted warehouse with borrowed equipment and personnel. No financial institution stepped forward to loan the new city funds, and city officials shoveled snow and dug gas money for police cars out of their own pockets. Despite a hardscrabble and politically acrimonious start, gradually the city government stabi-lized, taxes dropped, and services developed. In 1984 with Bangerter's gubernatorial victory over former congressman Wayne Owens, West Valley City's self-image and its status within the valley improved. A decade after its inception, the number of West Valley City res-idents had increased by nearly 20 percent. A $9.6 million city hall rose at 3600 South Constitution Boulevard (2700 West), housing a gov-ernment with revenues of more than $15 million annually. Residents paid only $50 more in taxes on a $100,000 home than did county res-idents in unincorporated areas.'* The Salt Lake Tribune reported on the occasion of the city's fif-teenth anniversary in positive terms. "West Valley is flourishing. Streetlights and sidewalks abound. Ordinance enforcement and com-munity planning are creating beautified neighborhoods and new upscale ho~sing."'T~h e anniversary party featured a speech by Governor Norman Bangerter, feasting, and games. The children of Paul and Moni Tuatonga caught a reporter's eye as they piled up a dozen first place t-shirts in the day's competitions. Just as the Tuatonga children made their mark at the anniversary party, the Tongan sector of the diverse Asian and Pacific Islander community within the valley became increasingly distinct and visi-ble during the 1980s. Significant islander immigration began in the 1960s' with most newcomers finding homes on the westside and working within the service sector of the occupational spectrum. A Tongan community became increasingly distinct during the 1980b~r~in g-ing cultural traditions and a sport new to the valley-rugby. Here a family picnics in Jordan Park. (David Conley-Deseret News) The 28,000 Salt Lake County residents who reported in the 1980 census that they spoke a language at home other than English or Spanish did not include the main influx of Pacific Islanders or Southeast Asian refugees. The size of the island communities proved difficult to ascertain since 1990 census counted only 3,904 Tongan- Americans in the state, while community leaders estimated the pop-ulation at 10,000 to 12,000. Similarly, the Samoan population, estimated by its leaders at around 5,000, registered only 1,570 in the By 1976 the Tongan Rugby Union had appeared, and soon its eight teams would include a Samoan team in vigorous games, often played at the Jordan River State Park. The game of cricket also made an appearance in the valley, even as festivals, performances, and the exotic fruits and vegetables newly available in local markets marked the emergence of another community. The LDS missionary program was a significant factor in the Tongan immigration to Salt Lake County, and the first Tongan ward While the LDS Church missionary effort in Tonga spurred immigration to the Salt Lake Valley, the Tongan United Methodist Church also benefitted. Here leaders of the church begin Sunday rites. (Gerald Silver-Deseret News) in the valley was organized in Central City. By the decade's end sev-eral Tongan and two Samoan wards formed, and the Utah Polynesian Choir became a popular group, specializing in LDS hymns sung in English and in island languages. The native languages used in church meetings strengthened cultural ties, further reinforced by classes for the young in native language, music, and dance forms.21 Other religious denominations also benefited. In 1978 the Tongan United Methodist Church opened in the former Grace Methodist building in Salt Lake City. In 1983 Bishop Patelisio Finau of the diocese of Tonga visited Tongan Catholics at St. Patrick's Church in Salt Lake City. In the late 1980s, Governor Bangerter appointed an advisory council from the Polynesian community. Chair Phil Uipi represented Tongans, vice-chair Wayne Selu represented Samoans, and council members Ellen Selu, Winton Ria, and Tekehu Munani voiced the concerns of Hawaiians, Maoris, and Tahitians. A Republican, Uipi also became the state's first Polynesian legislator. A diverse Southeast Asian community developed following the Vietnam War. Here, Cambodian dancers thank legislators for recognizing the com-munity's contributions. Pacific Islanders were often grouped statistically with the offi-cially larger population of Southeast Asians which grew steadily throughout this decade. Following a 1975 ceasefire and the United States withdrawal from Vietnam, more than 12,000 refugees resettled in Utah, many in Salt Lake County. Most found the winters too cold and public assistance too brief to learn the language, gain profes-sional skills, and sink roots. While many in the first wave moved to California, others arrived. By 1990 the Southeast Asian population statewide rested at over eight thousand, with most in the Salt Lake Valle~.'~ Certain neighborhoods with a significant Hispanic component became home to numerous refugees, including the Guadalupe area in northwest Salt Lake City, nearby Rose Park, Chesterfield, and Midvale. Even within itself the refugee community was widely diverse, ranging from sophisticated and often multi-lingual Vietnamese urbanites to tribal hill people from Laos and Cambodia. New agencies and programs appeared to offer services. In 1985 One of Salt Lake County's most popular ethnic festivals-the Asian Festival-includes performances by many groups including these Laotian dancers. (Paul Barker-Deseret News) Betty North opened the New Hope Refugee Friendship Center in her Salt Lake City home. A year later, the center moved to Eleventh West and Fourth North streets, devoted to helping refugees gain access to public services. Chiefly serving Vietnamese, the center also offered aid to Laotian, Hmong, and Cambodian refugees. The Asian Association of Utah joined the New Hope Center in striving to serve this diverse and greatly challenged population. The influx of refugees prompted the opening of Port of Entry programs in a selected schools throughout the valley, teaching English and social and cul-tural orientation as well as academic subjects. Meanwhile fine Vietnamese restaurants appeared in Salt Lake City and the southwest valley; Hmong "flower cloth" attracted cus-tomers at festivals and art shows; and the offerings at the spring Asian Festival and other community gatherings displayed native dances, music, and other customs. Korea House, the state's first Korean restaurant, opened in Salt Lake City in 1986. In 1989 the Filipino Performing Arts of Utah was formed. Most Southeast Asian immigrants were Buddhist, and within the next decade a Laotian temple would appear in Sandy, a Cambodian temple at the New Hope Multicultural Center, and a Vietnamese temple in the Guadalupe neighborhood. Christian congregations also developed. Some newcomers converted to Mormonism, served by a Vietnamese branch in Taylorsville. By the mid- 1990s, five hundred Vietnamese Catholics worshipped in the Immaculate Conception Church in Copperton. The Vietnamese Catholic Center remodeled the former LDS Kearns Second Ward to host a variety of community activities. In comparison with these groups, Latinos had become tenured within the valley, yet the community continued grow and diversify through immigration. The 1980 census reported that nearly 16,000 county residents over kindergarten-age reported speaking Spanish at home. During the 1980s, El Salvadorans, Guatemalans, and Nicaraguans arrived due to political disturbances in their native lands. A significant farmworker population, both migrant and stable, continued to grow quietly within the northwest sector, the Chesterfield area, and in Midvale. Although the latter population was impossible to count accu-rately due both to its mobility and the fear of deportation, the Utah Rural Development Council-offering services at the county multi-purpose centers and in Midvale-estimated it at 15,000 to 20,000 in a good harvest year. Largely invisible to the dominant population, the migrants lived in shelters provided by farmers, camped in or around their trucks, or shared rental space. Some settled in, working in ser-vice jobs in motels, restaurants, and in factories, often under poor condition^.^^ Latinos also participated in valley life at a sophisticated level. In 198 1 Angel Abrea became the first Latino general authority of the LDS church. Alex Hurtado, who had been named in 1979 to the Utah Board of Regents, resigned in 1981 to work for the Republican National Committee. Michael N. Martinez, formerly with the state attorney general's office and the Reagan administration's Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, was appointed deputy county attorney under county attorney Ted Cannon. In 1986 Victoria As many as 20,000 migrant and resident farm workers labored in Salt Lake County in the early 1980s in a good harvest year, most of them Hispanic. (Howard C. Moore-Deseret News) Palacios became the first Latina to serve on the state Board of Pardons. One measure of Salt Lake County's sophistication was marked by women following their sisters elsewhere in the nation into a variety of roles and positions. Women braved blue collar employment, for instance, including operating heavy machinery and earning higher wages than the traditional clerical and service positions. Meanwhile women producers and technicians at KRCL-Radio filled the valley's airwaves during Women's History Month each March with the pro-gram Women Aloud, featuring discussions, arts, and music "made for, by, and about women." Significantly, women adjudicated in a variety of courts in Salt Lake County. Utah's first woman appointed to the Third District Court, Christine M. Durham then rose in 1982 to the Utah Supreme Court. Judge Eleanor S. VanSciver became the first woman appointed to Utah's Fifth Circuit Court in 1978, soon followed by Judge Sheila McCleve. Judge Sharon McCully served in the Second District Juvenile Court and Judge Judith Billings in the Third District Court. In addition, Judge Jan Moffitt adjudicated administrative law for the Industrial Commission, and Commissioner Sandra Peuler was appointed to the Third District Co~rt.~' Whether wearing judicial robes or operating a backhoe, however, women in heretofore unavailable positions learned the necessity of solidarity and continuity. They faced patronizing colleagues at the least, and sexual harassment at the worst. Within the formal and soft-spoken legal arena, Justice Durham shouldered the task of sensitiz-ing officers of the court to sexist attitudes and also devised a powerful symbol for women entering the judiciary. She designed a gavel engraved as a memorial to Utah's first female judge, Reva Beck Bosone, which was handed down to each woman as she first took her seat at the bench. A native of Salt Lake County, Durham had become interested in the law as a Wellsley University student who liked to attend her dates' law classes. She graduated from the Duke University Law School and hung her shingle, then returned to the Salt Lake Valley with her hus-band, Dr. George Durham, and their young family. She practiced part time, became an adjunct professor at the Brigham Young University Law School, an instructor of legal medicine at the University of Utah, and served on advisory boards of diverse agencies. When she applied for a judgeship, she claimed professional expo-sure to family and juvenile problems, drug abuse, contracts, negli-gence and torte law, and board and practical management. Despite her youth and perhaps aided by her gender and the times, Durham's name was one of three presented by a judicial selection committee to Matheson. Following interviews, the governor telephoned Durham with the remark, "How about if you and I make a little history?" Four years later, the governor and judge made history again when Governor Scott Matheson appointed Durham to the Utah Supreme Other women fulfilled significant public roles. During the 1980s, Republican Katie L. Dixon served as county recorder and several city councils in the valley gained female faces, including Sydney Fonnesbeck in Salt Lake City, Betty Johnson and Fonda Fairbanks in Sandy, the latter followed by Judy Bell in 1994, as well as city com- missioner Renee W. Mackay in the newly incorporated West Valley City. Throughout this decade, the news and entertainment media both reflected and perpetuated the Salt Lake Valley's urbanity as station transfer regulations were relaxed and the broadcast market grew to include Ogden and Provo. The market became increasingly attractive to investors who contributed corporate management and cash. As broadcasters in Salt Lake County became increasingly competitive nationwide, they formed the Salt Lake Market Radio Broadcasters Association which opened to all Wasatch Front broadcasters later as the Salt Lake Area Broadcasters Association. Several stations sold to corporations outside the state, while George Hatch of the Com-munication Investment Corporation, David Williams of General Telephone, and Roy Simmons of Zion's First Security Bank main-tained local station^.'^ The LDS-owned Bonneville International, headed since 1964 by Arch Madsen, expanded its markets to include radio and television properties in Seattle and New York, and broadcast properties in Los Angeles, Kansas City, Chicago, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C. Bonneville also ran a film-production arm, a computer operation, and a number of audio production facilitie~.~' Journalism had come of age during the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War, and the Watergate scandal that toppled the Nixon presidency. The media now considered themselves conscious agents of change as well as conveyors of information. The major newspapers in the valley gave a boost to investigative reporting during this decade complemented by smaller publications such as the feisty and eclectic Utah Holiday magazine, followed by Network, Catalyst, Private Eye, and Event, all publishing in Salt Lake City. In the process, Americans had not only discovered their "right to know," with all its attendant stress and responsibility, but had grown increasingly cynical toward government and other powers. As a result, past decades acquired a sheen of innocence that could be captured within the Salt Lake Valley where the emphasis remained on large families, at-home mothers (though the majority of women worked outside the home), and deference to authority. Simultaneously, insti- tutions-notably the University of Utah and the LDS church-became increasingly adept at attracting and fielding media coverage. As was true in the late 1970s, dramatic and bizarre crimes con-tinued to dominate the attention of valley residents and the local and national media. One that was widely-reported involved a murderer tracked across the nation. He was tried and convicted twice within the valley before local authorities relinquished him to other jurisdic-tions, and his eventual confession came not in court but belatedly to a reporter. Four young friends jogged through Liberty Park on 20 August 1980, rounded the Ninth South end, and headed across Fifth East Street toward the 7-Eleven convenience store on the corner. As they crossed the street, rifle shots felled Ted Fields, twenty, and David Martin 111, eighteen. They died where they fell, though two fifteen-year- old girls jogging with them were terrified but unhurt. The crux of the Liberty Park murders was as evident as it would ever become; the young men were African-American the young women white. The valley's small African-American population trembled at the epicenter as shock waves spread. A week after the unsolved murders, the Reverend Theodore P. Fields, Ted Fields's father and leader of the New Pilgrim Baptist Church, asked the outraged community, partic-ularly its young, not to seek vengeance. He was joined by France Davis, pastor of Calvary Baptist Church, Robby Robinson, represent-ing the Faith Tempe Pentecostal Church, L. Moseley, pastor of Shiloh Baptist Church, and N. L. Liggins, pastor of New Zion Baptist Church in Ogden.28 Although the churchmen publicly voiced confidence in the efforts of the Salt Lake City Police Department, they also suggested that federal investigators enter the case. A few days later, the Federal Bureau of Investigation became involved, citing substantial reason to believe that two young men's civil rights had been violated-in other words, that they had been killed because of their race. Meanwhile the young men's employer, Northwest Pipeline Company, posted a $25,000 reward that joined a $10,000 reward offered by the Salt Lake Tribune's Secret Witness program. Yet another $10,000 was added anonymously, according to Salt Lake Police Chief E. L. Willoughby. More than two dozen investigators pieced fragments of evidence into a circumstantial case. The shots had been fired from a weedy vacant lot on the northwest corner of the intersection; a car had been seen driving away, and the youngsters had been heckled in the park minutes earlier-but no one had seen the assailant or knew of any motive. Local police work was augmented by investigations of similar shootings in other cities. Accused was Joseph Paul Franklin, a middle-aged drifter from Mobile, Alabama, and a member of the Ku Klux Klan and the American Nazi Party. Although Franklin claimed innocence, he was linked to thirteen murders across the United States in a personal campaign against interracial couples as well as the attempted mur-ders of National Urban League president Vernon Jordan and Hustler magazine publisher Larry Flynt. Franklin was tried and convicted in Salt Lake City, first in federal and then in state court, gleaning four life sentences. He blamed the LDS church and local government for his convictions, citing their opposition to his racial attitudes. A decade later, however, while confined in a federal penitentiary in Marion, Illinois, Franklin confessed to reporter Chris Vanocur that he killed the young men for "race mixing."29 The hatred evident in the Liberty Park murders shocked the val-ley that had, since settlement, perpetuated, ignored, and struggled to end discrimination. As racial violence leaped from the television screen site warmly familiar to many valley dwellers, the words uttered at a victim's memorial service seemed to echo: "The whole world stopped while these boys died."30 While the Salt Lake Vdey continued to cringe at appearing in the national media for violent or bizarre events, the national media was eagerly beckoned to the University of Utah Medical Center by admin-istrator Dr. Chase Peterson for historic surgery on 2 December 1982. That enthusiasm infused this front-page Deseret News report: Approximately 75 reporters from across the country with cameras and lights in hand awaited word at the University Hospital as if their favorite uncle lay on the operating table. Television reporters asked that progress reports be timed to coincide with morning news shows on the East Coast. Newspaper reporters rushed to the telephones to call in each new development in the seven-hour operation. Radio reporters taped their stories during the briefings, echoing each statement made by a hospital official. The major television networks, cable networks, news mag-azines, and major newspapers all sent reporters, photographers, and film crews to the University of Utah medical center. Even with all the coverage from local and national media the hospital arranged its own coverage. The entire operation was filmed, and medical illustrationists took black-and-white and color photographs during the surgery.31 For some time the University of Utah Medical School had con-ducted energetic and innovative research into transplants, protheses, and artificial organs under the direction of Dr. Willem Kolff. As quickly as the Federal Drug Administration approved the device at the end of 1982, a carefully-assembled team of surgeons and techni-cians removed a human heart and implanted an artificial one in its place. Dr. Barney Clark, a dentist from Seattle, Washington, was so close to dying from heart failure that he was rushed into surgery ahead of schedule. By the time the sun rose, Clark had begun living his 112 days of borrowed time.32 Optimism prevailed as the plastic heart beat, for more than 35,000 hearts were needed for transplants every year in the United States alone, and only two thousand donor hearts became available. Scientists and doctors hoped that, at the least, the artificial heart could keep patients alive long enough to receive transplants; at most, it might replace trans-plants altogether. In the glare of national and local publicity, surgeons William DeVries and Lyle Joyce became virtual celebrities as did Dr. Robert Jarvik, designer of the Jarvik-7 heart which improved upon ear-lier models by Dr. Clifford Kwan-Gett and Donald Lyman. Two days after the implant, Clark returned to surgery, where doc-tors stapled his leaking lungs. Seizures struck Clark on 7 December, and he never fully recovered from their effects. Additional surgeries to fix a broken valve on the heart and to stop nosebleeds allowed him to move into a private room where he and his wife, Una Loy Clark, cele-brated their thirty-ninth wedding anniversary and began to discuss going home. Two weeks later, however, Clark developed problems, and whole body systems began to fail. He died the night of 23 March. Washington dentist Barney Clark was rushed, dying, into surgery at the University of Utah Medical Center the night of 1 December 1982 and given the first artificial heart to beat in a human chest. He died on 23 March 1983. (Special Collections, University of Utah) The optimism following the surgery deflated into discussions of ethics, patient care, grandstanding, and finances. Both DeVries and Jarvik left the University of Utah, even as controversy rose around the Jarvik-7's clinical use and the ownership of its patents. Symbion, marketers for the Jarvik-7, went out of business after Jarvik was fired in 1987; the federal government filed a criminal complaint against the company in 1994, claiming it had filed false reports. Despite con-tinued implants, criticism grew in the medical community that the Jarvik-7 was not sophisticated enough for human use, and in 1990 the FDA withdrew its approval." While the future envisioned upon the night the artificial heart first beat did not arrive, 160 artificial hearts of the Utah type had ticked temporarily in human chests by 1992. Many of the principals of the first implant celebrated its tenth anniversary in Salt Lake City. During his speech, Jarvik whipped the Jarvik-2000 heart from beneath his jacket to describe how this palm-sized model could be slipped into a diseased heart through a ventricle. He predicted that widespread usage of it remained the solution to heart di~ease.'~ In 1995 the artificial heart beat again in Salt Lake City, implanted 12 April at LDS Hospital in the chest of a fifty-six-year-old Idaho man, as a part of the U.T.A.H. Cardiac Transplant program. The Salt Lake Tribune interviewed Kolff, by then retired. "It's high time the artificial heart comes back to Utah," the doctor said. "I'm absolutely delighted and I hope this will be the first of a series of patients that will be delegated to Utah because it was here that the artificial heart was born."35 Not even the excitement aroused by the artificial heart implant could completely distract valley residents from the relentless rain. The 198 1-82 water year had broken all records; then September 1982 climaxed with ten times more moisture than normal. A sense of fore-boding grew valley-wide, as autumn mud slides closed Big and Little Cottonwood canyons and creeks flooded, damaging three hundred homes, roads, and bridges. At September's end, Governor Matheson declared a state of emergency, but the federal government declined his appeal for aid. In fact, September's "once-in-a-century flood" turned out to be only a bath. Although January and February 1983 proved mild, March again broke records with deluges of rain and snow. Skiers and resort owners smiled while city, county, and state officials prepared for the worst. Matheson appointed Utah Public Safety commissioner Wooden pedestrian and auto bridges made the State Street river the bright side of statewide flooding in spring 1983. Rivers along Thirteenth South, North Temple, and Ninth South streets helped escort the waters out of town. (Tom Smart-Deseret News) Larry Lunnen his "water czar," and Salt Lake County Flood Control Division director Terry Holnvorth found his name in the newspapers almost daily. The Jordan River brimmed due to an effort to reduce flooding in Utah Lake; now workers constructed levies and dikes. Murray 0%- cials improved their communications system to correct September's inter-agency snarls. Meanwhile snow and rain continued to fall on earth that could absorb no more moisture. April not only topped March's moisture content but also added hurricane winds of up to one hundred miles per hour, causing mil-lions of dollars in damage along the Wasatch Front. Next, cracks appeared in the earth, slumping ground near the Capitol and closing two roads. Below the Emigration Oaks Condominiums overlooking the valley, the hillside slipped, taking out a sewer line and allowing waste to seep into Emigration Creek. Salt Lakers' attention was then diverted by a huge slide to the south that drowned the town of Thistle in the Spanish Fork River and by devastating mud slides to the north in Farmington and Bountiful. The entire state felt the effects of the deluge, humorously summed up by the governor in his much-quoted statement, "This is a hell of a way to run a desert."36 Perhaps the height of optimism-or a popularized clinical term, "denialn-became apparent when Saltair I11 opened on the south shore of the Great Salt Lake. Partners Wallace A. Wright, who devel-oped Trolley Square, Jim Sands, and John Silver and Stewart Grow, who already operated concessions, had announced the project two years earlier. Wright showed the creativity that made Trolley Square Mall famous when he found an old aircraft hangar at Hill Air Force Base, had it dismantled, then reconstructed on the Saltair site. The new dance floor gleamed eight feet above the lake-more than four thousand feet above sea level. The last time the lake had risen higher, Rutherford B. Hayes had been in the White House. Yet no sooner did construction begin than the lake began its climb. At first the partners coped, replacing their dune buggy concession with a sailboat concession. But a year after the grand opening, only salty waves danced on the hardwood floor of the new resort, and the Moorish towers stood vacant and desolate.37 May had proven climactic overall. Rain and snow dispelled signs of spring until the month's end when temperatures soared into the 80s. Then canyon snowdrifts melted furiously into swollen streams and sodden ground. On 26 May, Thirteenth South Street was trans-formed by officials into a river flowing from Sixth West Street to the Jordan River. Trucks dumped eight loads of earth per hour into dikes, bolstered by sandbags and plastic. Soon blocks eastward were also encompassed, passing West Temple, and reaching Liberty Park in an effort to contain the flow from Red Butte, Emigration, and Parleys creeks. A second river appeared on Ninth South Street, but would not remain long. Over the Memorial Day weekend, temperatures rose into the 90s. Children and teenagers splashed in the swollen creeks, ponds, and even the new river made treacherous by invisible manholes; sightseers stopped along Interstate 15 to spy the valley's new waterway, and vol-unteers continued slinging sandbags. Police with bullhorns chased the curious and the adventurous away from the Thirteenth South river. In fact, their flat-bottomed boat, equipped with a spotlight, and their ultra-light aircraft became known in city council meetings as the police chief's army and navy. Then City Creek, notorious along North Temple in pioneer days, raised a ruckus. Leaping its usually quiet banks in Memory Grove, it sprinted into town and splashed against the LDS Church Office Building on North Temple Street then rushed Temple Square. Those buildings and the Salt Palace were quickly sandbagged even as waves lapped at the Eagle Gate apartments on South Temple Street and cir-cled the Brigham Young monument where South Temple intersected with Main. That weekend volunteerism captured the media's attention almost as strongly as the flooding. The American Red Cross, the Salvation Army, and the Job Corps all proved valuable; key, however, was the tightly knit LDS organization that had hailed 14,000 women to a feminist conclave and organized thousands of anti-ERA lobby-ists. Now that power to mobilize became not only visible but provi-dential under the direction of general authority Robert E. Wells and in cooperation with city and county official^.'^ On Sunday even Mayor Wilson slung sandbags as the State Street River was born to prevent millions of dollars in property damage to the downtown business district. Several thousand volunteers threw up a dirt and sandbag wall from Memory Grove to Fourth South Street as City Creek once again raged toward the city. North Temple Street overflowed when its crucial conduit became jammed with debris, an obstruction that would prove almost impossible to blast or drill loose. During the next week, the State Street River moved south, threat-ening to meet the Thirteenth South river and effectively bisect the city; however, it was finally contained at Eighth South Street. Meanwhile wooden bridges for both pedestrians and vehicles allowed traffic across the river and linked downtown to the interstate. For weeks the brown waters sped through the city, ignoring the sema-phores that turned red and green above them. Restaurants and shops exploited the novelty, as a stroll along the river became de rigueur during the lunch hour or after work. Businesses along North Temple Street were less pleased when City Creek was rerouted there, and the State Street River vanished, sandbags, bridges, and all. Although the outer lanes on North Temple were finally opened to traffic, the conduit and the street required major and lengthy repairs. Thirteenth South Street merchants also suffered as city workers renovated the conduit for future use. Meanwhile flooding outside the business district demanded attention. Parleys Creek surged around the Granite Tabernacle on Ninth East Street near Twenty-First South, placing one home on an island. Three hundred Murray residents were temporarily displaced from the Cottonwood Cove mobile home park as Big Cottonwood Creek brimmed its protective dikes. The sandbags removed from downtown Salt Lake City quickly banked the Jordan River, the Surplus Canal along Twenty-First South Street, Big and Little Cottonwood creeks, and Mill Creek, all of which peaked later than City Creek. Tragically, two flood-related fatalities were reported in the county, one an electrocution, and the other a drowning in Little Cottonwood Creek.39B y June's end, only mud, memories, repairs, and photographs witnessed Salt Lake County's trial by weather, and its triumph through cooperation. With the floodwaters contained and sunshine welcome, the Salt Lake Valley turned to Pioneer Day celebrations. Even as parades and picnics commenced, however, a mystifying and alarming phenome-non reached a tragic conclusion. The bodies of five missing boys were retrieved, two from the swollen Big Cottonwood Creek and the oth-ers from the Central Utah desert. The boys had vanished sporadically in what became a terrifying and accelerating pattern. As the pho-tographs of missing children appeared in the media, fearful parents monitored their children closely and some purchased "kidnapping kits," so that-if the worst happened-they could identify their chil-dren's remains. At the core of the panic was the cold reality that the children had disappeared under seemingly innocuous circumstances. On 16 October 1979, four-year-old Alonzo Daniels gained permission from his mother to play outside the laundry facility in their apartment complex in northwest Salt Lake City while she finished her task. A few minutes later, he was nowhere to be found. On 9 November 1980, eleven-year-old Kim Peterson left his eastside Salt Lake City home to meet a man who wanted to buy the ball bearings from his roller skates. He never returned. Four-year-old Danny Davis accompanied his grandfather on 20 October 1981 to a supermarket on State and 3900 South streets in Murray and vanished from the store. On 22 June 1983, his sixth birthday, Troy Ward wore his cowboy boots to the corner of Eighth South and Third East streets in Salt Lake City to wait for a family friend. He disappeared. Less than a month later on 14 July, thirteen-year- old Graeme Cunningham (who looked young for his age) went to meet a friend at a market one block from his home, near Fourth East and Thirteenth South streets. He never returned." Arthur Gary Bishop, a mild-mannered, chubby man on proba-tion for embezzlement, narrowly eluded police in more than one dis-appearance. Using aliases and changing addresses, Bishop befriended boys, molested and photographed them, and-in at least five instances-killed them. Cool enough to carry Alonzo Daniels's body in a box past his frantic mother, Bishop crumpled under questioning about the Cunningham boy. He confessed matter-of-factly in a chill-ing, tape-recorded account, then helped police locate the bodies. Following a grisly trial highlighted by the testimony of five boys Bishop had molested (and whose names and faces were protected by the media), he was convicted of five counts of first degree murder.41 He refused to appeal and was executed at the Utah State Penitentiary in 1988 by lethal injection. No state, certainly not Utah, could afford to lose $200 million from its economy. Yet fraud robbed the state of that amount as nine thousand people, many within Salt Lake County, fell prey to a vari-ety of investment schemes, including gold mines, diamond ventures, ponzi schemes, and real estate scams. Not only were these losses grievous to the victims and the econ-omy, but the frauds seriously compromised the valley's position in the national securities market and in raising business capital. A branch office of the Securities and Exchange Commission had come to Salt Lake City in 1954, twenty years after the commission was organized nationally to enforce federal securities laws. In addition, brokers and dealers in the state joined the self-regulating National Association of Securities Dealers. Still, abuses and frauds using shell corporations had created an unfavorable national reputation for Utah-based stock companies following the uranium boom in south-ern Utah. And government, itself, would reap blame for failing to adequately protect public investors. Eventually the valley risked com-promising its reputation as a regional financial center. In 1984 Governor Matheson assigned a Securities Fraud Task Force to study the problem. By the year's end, the group pinpointed laws that permitted the sale of undercapitalized corporations ripe for fraudulent activity, and blamed a lack of coordination and coopera-tion among state, county, and federal enforcement and prosecution agencies. Especially troublesome were the many schemes that slipped past the notice of federal agencies since they involved relatively small amounts of money and a limited number of investors. The task force further reported that the valley's citizens appeared particularly susceptible to fraudulent schemes. Most victims were uninformed and unsophisticated when it came to investing money; nevertheless, they felt comfortable basing their financial decisions on personal and religious associates. "Several investment schemes have relied directly or indirectly upon religious affiliations," the task force reported. "Most of these fraudulent schemes have promised excessive returns on investments appealing directly to greed.'' Simply put, the frauds typically plagued networks of friends and churchgoers who believed that investing a little and profiting a lot was possible if a trusted individual backed the deal.42 A wavy line ran between sharp business practices, unwise invest-ments, and outright fraud. Governor Bangerter's administration not only implemented the task force recommendations, but also closed the penny stock trade and major thrifts and loans, then set about set-tling with investors. The heads of several failed investment schemes and companies were prosecuted during the decade with mixed results. When three murderous bombs exploded in Salt Lake County on 15 and 16 October 1985, the high-flying CFS Financial Corp., spiral-ing toward bankruptcy, seemed linked to the unknown perpetrator's motive. As it turned out, fraud did underlie the bombings, involving not the investment company but a labyrinthian scheme to rewrite Mormon history through forged documents and to dupe church leaders, historians, investors, eastern experts, and the public at large, as well as to turn a profit. When the scam floundered, bombs expressed an unforeseen and sociopathic rage that rattled the valley and drew the eyes of the nation. Steven F. Christensen, a young LDS bishop killed by a bomb in the doorway of his Judge Building office, had recently left a vice-pres-idency in the doomed CFS and was known as a Mormon history buff. As purchaser of the 1830 "salamander letter," he had the $30,000 manuscript authenticated in the East and studied by Mormon histo-rians before donating it, as controversy escalated, to the LDS church. Apparently penned by a close associate of Joseph Smith, the letter linked the ancient gold plates Smith said he used to produce the Book of Mormon not to an angel, but to a magical white salamander, con-sonant with nineteenth-century In June 1985, the letter's seller, Mark Hofmann, offered Christensen a more controversial discovery-journals and artifacts owned by William McLellin, a renegade nineteenth-century LDS apostle. Christensen told Hofmann he could not afford another pur-chase and took him to see LDS general authority Hugh Pinnock. (Pinnock's business acumen not only made him valuable to the church, but had placed him on the governor's fraud task force.) Pinnock checked with his ecclesiastical superiors, then arranged a $185,000 unsecured loan for Hofmann at First Interstate Bank where Pinnock served as a director. Christensen volunteered as authenticator of the documents, hoping to have them studied. Hofmann, however, used the bank's money to pay off a previous $154,000 loan on the McLellin scam and stalled Christensen who became point man for the church authorities as they received pres-sure from the bank. A forger and con man by profession, Hofmann spent the year 1985 trying to rescue grandiose schemes. By September, the First Interstate bank loan was in arrears, media exposure threatened, and the McLellin deal grew increasingly pressured. Even as Mormons gathered for October general conference, Christensen, Pinnock, and Hofmann, overseen by Apostle Dallin H. Oaks and President Gordon B. Hinckley, restructured the transaction. Desperately Hofmann worked to keep them and other investors at bay, even marketing a papyrus fragment he had told Christensen was part of the McLellin collection. The day Christensen locked up the papyrus for safekeeping, Hofmann bought bomb parts. The McLellin deal was reset for the morning of 15 October, the day Christensen picked up a package bomb. His widow was pregnant with their fourth son who would be born on his father's birthday. Earlier that same morning, CFS president J. Gary Sheets, another LDS bishop, drove past a package bomb outside his garage in still-dark Holladay. His wife, Kathleen Webb Sheets, grabbed the box bearing her husband's name when she returned from a walk. The explosion bereaved her husband, four children, and three grandchil-dren and directed investigators' attention toward the floundering investment company. The decoy worked too well, however, for when Hofmann checked in at the LDS Administration Building that afternoon, Oaks resched-uled the McLellin deal for the following day. On 16 October, Hofmann bought bomb parts in Logan then parked on 200 North Street with a third bomb, as a purchasing agent and authenticator waited for him to bring the McLellin collection. When the bomb exploded, Hofmann was seriously injured; searches of his car and home made him a principal suspect in the murders. Before he could be charged, however, dozens of investigators traced a labyrinth of authenticated historical documents and fraud-ulent deals then countered Hofmann's lofty reputation in church, his-torical, and manuscript circles. Forensic scientists learned that Hofmann had used old paper and created his own inks, then aged them chemically. Not only had he fooled customers, historians, and authenticators, but also the Federal Bureau of Investigation labora-tory. 44 Four months after the bombings, Hofmann was charged with thirty-two counts of capital murder, forgery, and fraud. Following a five-week preliminary hearing, he was bound over for trial but left free on bond. In January 1987 Hofmann pleaded guilty to second degree murder, forgery, and fraud, and was sentenced to five-years- to-life at the Utah State Penitentiary. After listening to him dispas-sionately describe his crimes, the Board of Pardons refused in 1988 to set another hearing date.45 Not only did the Hofmann saga publicize Mormon and even American history in an unexpected context, but it also shook the val-ley's sense of reality. His "discoveries" lay in collections and hung in galleries across the nation. They had been highlighted in LDS publi-cations as well as locked in restricted vaults; their emergence had energized revisionist Mormon history and boosted coin, Mormon money, rare book, and manuscript markets locally and in the East. In all these arenas and markets, scholars, officials, experts, and investors suffered from Hofmann's exposure as a fraud. Hofrnann's crimes reached deeper into the valley's cultural ethos than forged Deseret currency and notes to Brigham Young. Investigators found that while Hofmann profited handsomely, his bent toward altering Mormon history included an obsession with historical secrets, including one in his family. A grandfather had mar-ried polygamously following the Second Manifesto of 1904, and his second wife bore all the family's children including Hofmann's mother. The family believed the marriage legitimate although church authorities had asked them not to discuss the matter. Seven years after the bombings, LDS historical department direc-tor Richard Turley published a book from the church's perspective. He revealed that some McLellin papers had been found in a church vault by employees answering subpoenas for Hofmann's preliminary hearing. Since Hinckley and Oaks elected not to enlighten the court, Pinnock unknowingly testified that the church had no knowledge or possession of any McLellin collection, and Hinckley's testimony stip-ulated the same. This belated secret added a final irony to this deep-rooted and most convoluted murder mystery.46 Despite the economic challenges of the 1980s, the south valley continued its metropolitan trend. ZCMI announced plans to build a $100 million store in Sandy, and the department store became anchor of the South Towne Mall. Turnmar-Collier joined ZCMI in develop-ing the 1.1 million square-feet of retail space on more than one hun-dred acres at 10600 South Street and Interstate 15. South Jordan accrued upscale neighborhoods during these years, as well as a prominent landmark. In 1981 the LDS church erected the Jordan River temple on 1300 West and 10200 South, a site easily vis-ible from Interstate 15. The continued growth throughout the south valley kept the interstate busy, even congested during rush hours. Crowded roads, like crowded classrooms, were becoming commonplace near the decade's end. A disaster early in 1987, however, pointed up the dan-gers of congested skies. Students at the St. Francis Xavier Catholic school on 5200 South Street at about 4500 West had returned to their desks following lunch, just before gruesome debris rained into the parking lot and upon an area three miles long and one mile wide. Above Kearns, a private airplane carrying an instructor and a student pilot had col-lided with a Skywest Western Express commuter plane, carrying two pilots and the six passengers they had picked up in Pocatello, Idaho. No one on either plane survived; remarkably, there were no casual-ties on the ground although several homes were damaged. Only the year before, Skywest had scored a record year, carrying 762,773 passengers and more than one hundred tons of cargo. The company had begun humbly, ferrying passengers between Salt Lake City and St. George. Now as it concluded this forty-five minute flight in calm January skies, the commuter plane left its southern course and began turning northeast to approach the airport runway. Meanwhile a Mooney-20 plane practiced take-offs and landings dur-ing a training flight from Salt Lake City Airport No. 2 at 7400 South and 4500 West streets. Unaccountably the smaller aircraft climbed into commercial airspace.47 Salt Lake County sheriff N.D. (Pete) Hayward and his officers established a command post at the St. Xavier church, and used its garage as a temporary morgue. Numerous police and fire depart-ments donated officers and search dogs, combing the neighborhoods for body parts and plane debris. The State Medical Examiner and pathologists from the University Medical Center arrived to begin the grim task of identifying bodies. Meanwhile Father Louis Fischer com-forted students then roamed the neighborhood, murmuring last rites over human remains and offering comfort to distraught witnesses.48 Ultimately the disaster was attributed to an error of the student pilot of the Mooney plane; nevertheless, the radar system at the Salt Lake International Airport was replaced in 1990. One airport official compared the two systems as a Model A Ford versus a Space Age rocket, yet the new system, too, experienced "ghosts" and blind spots on the screen. Some were due to the valley's geography; winter tem-perature inversions, evaporation from the Great Salt Lake, and reflec-tions from the settling ponds used by mineral companies could all create false phenomena.49 The airport would only become busier, handling more than 380,000 takeoffs and landings annually by 1994; nevertheless, the Federal Aviation Administration officials pointed to the airport's record as one of the safest in the world. Science stole center stage again just before the decade ended. The University of Utah stunned the world by announcing that it had dis-covered the energy secret of the future. A press release issued on 23 March 1989 read: "Two scientists have successfully created a sustained nuclear fusion reaction at room temperature in a chemistry labora-tory at the University of Utah." It continued: "The breakthrough means the world may someday rely on fusion for a clean, virtually inexhaustible source of energy."50 Collaborating in the experiments were two chemistry professors, Dr. Martin Fleschmann from the University of Southampton, England, and Dr. B. Stanley Pons, chair of the Department of Chemistry at the University of Utah. Dr. Chase Peterson who had shepherded the medical center through the artificial heart excitement was now university president and prepared for the ensuing media interest. The electrochemists had created a simple experiment equivalent to one in a freshman-level course. Unlike conventional nuclear fusion that required temperatures registering millions of degrees, this process could be done at room temperature. The experiment used two electrodes immersed in "heavy" water which contained deu-terium instead of hydrogen. One electrode comprised a strip of the metal palladium, the other a coil of platinum wire. Exposed to an electric current, the heavy water decomposed into deuterium and oxygen with the deuterium atoms entering the palla- dium electrode. There, Pons and Fleschmann contended, the atoms packed so tightly that they fused, releasing energy as heat. The experiments that began in the Pons's kitchen had continued at the university during late nights and weekends for more than five years before the announcement was made. Once public, other scien-tists around the world hurried to check the results. Excitement grew as some succeeded in duplicating the phenomenon, but negative results followed. Critical scientific papers virtually derailed the cold fusion effort and effectively quashed the university's pride. During the few years of excitement and doubt following the announcement, the university spent $5 million state dollars on legal fees protecting patent applications. In 1993 the university adminis-tration arranged to license its patent rights with a private company but retain the right to share in royalties that might accrue in the future.51 Undeterred by criticism, Pons and Fleschmann continued their work funded by a Japanese company, Technova, an affiliate of Toyota. Now their experiments were performed not in a University of Utah chemistry laboratory, but at the European branch of Japan's Institute of Minoru Research Advancement in the French Riviera town of Sophia Antip01is.~~ Some called cold fusion a mistaken discovery, others a scientific fraud; still others held out hope that the intriguing if unreliable results might yet prove to hold the secret of a clean, inexpensive fuel that could instigate an energy revolution worldwide. Not surprisingly perhaps in a stressful and eventful decade, sports achieved new prominence in Salt Lake County. Not only did they offer recreation and relief from the stresses of contemporary life, but they also became the harbinger of the 1990s. The Jazz basketball team got off to a tepid start in 1979 when fewer than eight thousand fans gathered in the Salt Palace stands and serious problems with players multiplied off the court. The turning point came when the Jazz surprised Utahns by capturing the 1983-84 Midwest Division title and began a long streak of playoff competi-tions, gleaning honors for Adrian Dantley, Mark Eaton, Rickey Green, and Darrell Griffith. In addition, general manager and coach Frank Layden was named NBA Coach of the Year in 1984 when he also received the association's Walter Kennedy Award, for contributions to the com-munity. Deseret News sports editor Dave Blackwell later wrote: "Perhaps Layden's biggest contribution was his good humor, his abil-ity to draw attention away from the Jazz's woes on and off the court with his overwhelming personality. Layden was the savior of the Jazz in the early years."53 In 1985 Larry Miller, a successful car dealer and owner of the Golden Eagles hockey team, purchased 50 percent of the Jazz and later the remaining share. All-stars Karl Malone, John Stockton, and others came aboard. By the late 1980s, Jazz tickets had become a hot commodity and Malone had signed a $28 million contract to stay with the Jazz through the turn of the century. The 1980s, a decade of hard financial and social lessons, inter-spersed by intrigue, horror, and excitement, was consistently-even relentlessly-illuminated by both local and national media. As a result, Salt Lakers were confronted with their own images, whether triumphing over natural disasters or mourning unnatural ones. With the incorporation of West Valley City, Draper, and Bluffdale, and metropolitan growth in Sandy and South Jordan, the county became increasingly urban, a trend that would continue. Women and minority groups, including whole new communities, worked year by year toward more proportionate representation within public and professional life. More importantly, perhaps, par-ticipation from all sectors gradually became assumed. "Firsts" con-tinued, but Salt Lake County eased into a hardwon maturity. Cold fusion still claimed the spotlight as the decade ended, yet the valley's characteristic enthusiasm would soon refocus with sports at center stage. Capturing the Olympic Games again became a prior-ity for boosters determined to convince the world that it wished to visit this beautiful, eventful, and paradoxical clime-then to welcome that world in all its complexity. ENDNOTES 1. Robert Burns, "To a Louse." The original Scottish dialect reads: "0 wad some Power the giftie gie us/ To see oursels as ithers see us!" 2. These included television films based on crimes committed by Ted Bundy, Gary Gilmore, Ervil LeBaron, Marc Schreuder and Frances Schreuder, and Richard Worthington. Books included Norman Mailer, The Executioner's Song (Gilmore); Steven Winn and David Merrill, The Killer Next Door (Bundy); Ann Rule, The Stranger Beside Me (Bundy); Steven G. Michaud and Hugh Aynesworth, The Only Living Witness (Bundy); Jonathan Coleman, At Mother's Request (Schreuder); Shana Alexander, Nutcracker (Schreuder); Ben Bradlee, Jr., and Dale Van Atta Prophet of Blood (LeBaron); Scott Anderson, The Four O'clock Murders (LeBaron); Linda Sillitoe and Allen D. Roberts, Salamander: The Story of the Mormon Forgery Murders (Mark Hofmann); Robert Lindsey, A Gathering of Saints (Hofmann); Stephen Naifeh and Gregory White-Smith, The Mormon Murders (Hofmann); and Richard E. Turley, Victims: The LDS Church and the Mark Hofmann Case. 3. Robert Gottlieb and Peter Wiley, America's Saints: The Rise of Mormon Power (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1984), 92-93. 4. Ibid., 93. 5. Ibid. 6. Thomas G. Alexander and James B. Allen, Mormons and Gentiles: A History of Salt Lake City (Boulder, Colorado: Pruett Publishing Company, 1984), 304-305. 7. Gottlieb and Wiley, America's Saints, 1 16. 8. Ibid., 115. 9. Ibid., 1 16-1 7. 10. Salt Lake Tribune, 10 June 1994. 11. Deseret News, 21 January 1987. Also Robert Gottlieb and Peter Wiley, "Triad Utah: Angels or Flying Carpetbaggers?" Utah Holiday March 1983,40-54. 12. Deseret News, 2 1 January 1987. 13. Ibid., 30 July 1980. 14. Michael J. Gorrell, The History of West Valley City (West Valley City: West Valley City Civic Committee, 1993), 18-2 1. 15. Ibid. 16. Ibid., 28. 17. Ibid., 36-39. 18. Salt Lake Tribune, 2 July 1995. 19. Ibid. 20. Carol Edison, "South Sea Islanders in Utah," Utah History Encyclopedia, Allan Kent Powell, ed. (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1994), 5 16. 2 1. Ibid. 22. Carol Edison, "Southeast Asians in Utah," Utah History Encyclopedia, 5 1 9. 23. Linda Sillitoe, "The Third World in Utah," in Deseret News Utah magazine, 25 March 1984, 5; and Linda Sillitoe, "The Border and the Promised Land," Deseret News Utah magazine, 19 August 1984,4-7. 24. Linda Sillitoe, "The Changing Face of Justice," in Deseret News Utah magazine, 4-6. 25. Ibid. 26. Tim Larson and Robert K. Avery, "Utah Broadcasting History," Utah History Encyclopedia, 5 7. 27. Ibid. 28. David Proctor, "The Sniper Murders: 'The Whole World Stopped While These Boys Died," Utah Holiday, October 1980, 70-80. 29. Salt Lake Tribune, 1 January 1990. 30. Proctor, "The Sniper Murders." 3 1. Deseret News, 2 December 1982. 32. Ibid. 33. Ibid., 7 June 1994. 34. Jan Thompson, Deseret News, 3-4 December, 1992. 35. Salt Lake Tribune, 13 April 1995. 36. Arnold Irvine, Jerry Johnston, and Linda Sillitoe, "The Floods of '83: Meltdown Along the Wasatch," in Deseret News Utah magazine, 26 June 1983. This special section details the flooding and volunteer efforts described herein. 37. David Hampshire, "The Great Salt Lake, Forlorn and Forgotten," Utah Holiday, September 1992,28-29. 38. Irvine, Johnston, and Sillitoe, "The Floods of '83." 39. Ibid. 40. Deseret News, 26 July 1983. 41. Linda Sillitoe, "Tom Vuyk: Helping Children Convict a Killer," in Deseret News Utah magazine, 8 July 1984, 5-6. This retrospective examines the prosecution of Bishop through using child witnesses whom he had molested, as well as the impact of the crimes on the victims' families and law enforcers. 42. "Report: Governor's Securities Fraud Task Force," December 1984, 2; copy in possession of the author. 43. Linda Sillitoe and Allen D. Roberts, Salamander: The Story of the Mormon Forgery Murders (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1988), details the bombings and the plethora of forgeries and frauds briefly described here. 44. Investigators involved represented the Salt Lake City Police Department, the Salt Lake County Sheriffs Department, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the San Francisco Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. Primary investigators were detectives Kenneth Farnsworth and James G. Bell, SLCPD, and investigators Michael George and Richard Forbes of the Salt Lake County Attorney's Office. Forensic document exam-iners George Throckmorton and William T. Flynn discovered that chemi-cally aging iron gallotannic ink caused microscopic cracking on the Hofmann documents. 45. Salt Lake County prosecutors in the five-week preliminary hearing were Robert Stott, Gerry D'Elia, and David Biggs. Defense attorneys Bradley P. Rich and Ron Yengich negotiated the controversial plea bargain. 46. Richard E. Turley, Jr., Victims: The LDS Church and the Mark Hofmann Case (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1992)' 250-5 1. 47. Salt Lake Tribune, 16 January 1987. 48. Ibid. 49. Ibid., 27 February 1994. 50. "Simple Experiment Results in Sustained N-Fusion at Room Temperature for First Time," University of Utah press release, 23 March 1989; copy in possession of the author. 5 1. Deseret News, 2 1 August 1994. 52. Ibid. 53. Dave Blackwell, "Utah Jazz," Utah History Encyclopedia, 592.