Pioneer Day, 2014. Does it Matter to Outsiders?

Pioneer Day! What is that?

Today is July 24, 2014. It is the 167th year since the summer that Brigham Young and other Latter-day Saint pioneers crossed the United States plains and he famously declared that the Salt Lake Valley was the right place to be settled for the largely unsettled Mormon people.


A few hundred Saints made it that first year, followed by thousands more in the ensuing years until about 1860. Many came in wagons, others walked along, and by the last few years a few thousand poorer converts to this new religion (founded officially in 1830, many were converted overseas like in Great Britain in the 1840s and 50s). The Salt Lake Valley was untamed by any people of European descent, and even the local native tribes were more hunters and wanderers, often suffering from hunger.


The Saints would make the desert bloom, naming it Deseret, evoking memories and comparisons of scriptural verses from the Old Testament and other scriptures that they touted, like the Book of Mormon translated by Joseph Smith Junior. Smith was born in Vermont and raised in New York, eventually moving to Pennsylvania, Ohio, Missouri and Illinois before being tragically and brutally lynched in a second story jail. In 1844.


Three years later Brigham Young had officially succeeded as Prophet, Seer and Revelator, of the new-founded but oft misunderstood, feared and persecuted Mormon movement, called formerly the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.


The founders, including 12 apostles and missionaries called Seventy in the Biblical fashion, who would eventually take multiple wives as former Biblical prophets, considered themselves the restorers of the true religion, covenants, and visions of the God of the Old World, lead and inspired by the Great Jehovah Himself.


Times were tough first going across Iowa on the winter trek in 1846, then settling temporarily at Winter Quarters in present day Nebraska, along the Missouri River of Council Bluffs, Iowa. Times were also tough bringing forth crops in and around what would become Salt Lake City, and later other valleys and river bottoms of the eventual state of Utah, and then progressively other later states like Idaho, Wyoming, Nevada, Arizona, California and other places.


Polygamy became the biggest obstruction to achieve statehood, but by 1896 six years of legal non-practice allowed Utah to come in as the 45th state. It had had the population for a while, but Wyoming's smaller numbers in becoming a state proved to Utah that it was worth doing.


So, whether people recognize the current LDS faith as a significant world player when it comes to humanitarian and other outreach, like its formidable missionary force across the globe, or its billions of dollars and hours invested I family history, it just might be noteworthy the date that all native Utahns know as the "Days of '47".


I lived in the state for five years in the 1990s, and before I left I felt as if I were a resident in a few ways. But even growing up in the Midwest, surrounded by LDS of many parts I knew that Pioneer Day celebrated and honored the fortitude, strength and dogged determination of my spiritual ancestors, a special group of people that truly believed they were re-establishing Zion.


Zion.


No, it is not always in the present state of Israel.


Utah has some Manassites and Ephraimites too.


But that is for another day.


Today, we simply celebrate and remember the Mormon pioneers.


Happy Pioneer Day, everyone, Latter-day Saint or not.


Blog on.


EMC.