Every Day Is Special: Utah

Showing posts with label Utah. Show all posts

July 24 – Pioneer Day in Utah

Posted on July 24, 2017

If you go to Salt Lake City, Utah, today, you might see something like this:

You see, today is Pioneer Day, a statewide holiday that commemorates the first group of Mormon pioneers who came to and settled the Salt Lake region.

Mormon is the word used for members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. After the death of Mormonism-founder Joseph Smith, in 1844, a group of Mormons followed their church president, Brigham Young, all the way from the Mississippi River to Utah Territory.

Even though this date commemorates the day in 1847 when Young and the other pioneers arrived in Salt Lake Valley, the holiday also honors all pioneers, of every faith or no faith, who "settled" the West.

And by "the West," I mean the western portion of the 48 contiguous United States (Alaska and Hawaii are waaayyy farther west than what we call "the West").

And by "settle," I mean "white folks coming and grabbing land that indigenous / native folks had been using but didn't OWN in a legalistic, document-oriented way." The Salt Lake Valley had been the home for groups of Shoshone, Ute, and Paiute. At the time when Young and his followers founded Salt Lake City, the land was Shoshone land - but they only used it seasonally. There were no permanent buildings there...until the Mormons began to build.

Even if a particular group of settlers were not the first to see a patch of land, travel a particular route, or use a particular valley, they were still going into the relatively unknown - to them, at least - and they still faced a lot of dangers. So they had to be courageous, resourceful, and (to be perfectly honest) lucky to survive. So, yes, let's celebrate pioneers!!

Salt Lake City has a lot of cool statues. This one memorializes the pioneers:

Many of the 70,000 Mormon pioneers couldn't afford a wagon and a team of oxen to pull the wagon...so they went West with only the possessions they could fit into a handcart they themselves pulled:

Here's an amazing fact: Mormon pioneers planted crops alongside the 1,300-mile-long trail so that later travelers could have a supply of food!

In addition to a parade, Pioneer Day festivities include a rodeo and concerts:

Also on this date:

Jose Barbosa Day in Puerto Rico

Anniversary of the Founding of Detroit

Cousins Day

Children's Day in Vanuatu

Simon Bolivar Day

Anniversary of the Apollo 11 splashdown

Guelaguetza Festival in Oaxaca

Plan ahead:

Check out my Pinterest boards for:

And here are my Pinterest boards for:

January 4 – Utah Celebrates Statehood

Posted on January 4, 2016

The statehood anniversaries just keep coming!

January 2 – Georgia

January 3 – Alaska

January 4 – Utah!

Utah is one of my favorite states. Because it has great rocks.

Utah has a place where the rocks look like drip sand castles – but giant sand castles you can wander among!

Utah has a place where you can walk up a giant slab of rock, until you get to a giant bowl created from the rock, and when you look across that bowl you can see the landscape through a delicately balanced arch cut by natural forces from – you guessed it – rock.

Utah has a place where water seeps through rock and drips down from cave walls. It has a place where water has cut through sheer rock walls; you can take a hike by walking through increasingly deep water, closed in by increasingly close rock walls. It has a place where the rocks seem to be carved into humpy checkered domes.

It has a bunch of places where the rocks are red-red-red, and other spots where the rocks are a mix of red and gold and white. It has loads of places where the rocks are sculpted into crazy, whimsical, or gorgeous shapes.

Utah has a place where you drive a narrow road that is like a “spine” between two drop-offs of gorgeous sheer cliffs of rock.

It has a place where you drive through a loooooong tunnel, stunned by gorgeous views every once in a while as you come to a window in the tunnel.

It has places where a rainstorm can transform a gorgeous, dry rockscape into what almost looks like a water park, with chutes and waterfalls and white-water rivers. The next day, the landscape is back to being bare rock, no water visible at all.

Utah even has a place in which an artist arranged some rocks in a lake to make a more interesting landscape. I give you Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty: