Temple Square, Salt Lake City

What a beautiful place. The Mormons have created an oasis of beauty and religion on 35 acres in the middle of downtown Salt Lake. We attended an organ concert at noon and a Mormon Tabernacle Choir rehearsal at night. Both were outstanding.

Encountered one of the 5 brides who were married in the temple that day.

Tabernacle were we heard the organ concert. We were given a demonstration of listening to a pin drop. The acoustic were amazing.

Is the Meeting House which was the first building on the property 

.

A perfect view of the temple.

Below are views of the miniature views of the inside of the temple.

The temple in a reflection pool.

The temple lit at night

A view of the Convention Center where where the rehearsal takes place. They also have "Music and The Word" here on Sunday.

Golden Spike

From Scramento and Omaha they met in Promontory, Utah. After 6 years of difficult back breaking work the Transcontinental Railroad was complete. In 1862 Congress authorized Central Pacific to build a railroad from the west and Union Pacific from the east. Each railroad received loan subsidies of $16,000 to $48,000 per mile, depending on the difficulty of the terrain, and 10 land sections for each mile of track laid.

Both railroad companies broke ground in 1863, but due to the Civil War, labor and materials were hard to obtain. After a visit to Washington from the heads of both railroads with enough cash in hand to help congressmen understand their problem, a second Railroad Act of 1864 doubled the land subsidies. But still little track was laid until after the war's end when labor and supplies were easier to obtain.

Central Pacific (CP) immediately faced the rugged Sierra Nevada range. Union Pacific (UP) had easier terrain but were raided by the Sioux and Cheyenne. Supplies were a logistical nightmare for both railroads, especially CP which had to ship every rail, spike and locomotive 15,000 miles around Cape Horn. UP employed Irish, German and Italian immigrants, Civil War veterans from both sides, ex-slaves, and American Indians - 8,000 a 10,000 workers in all. This mix was volital and bloodshed was common n in the towns thrown up near base camps (known as "Hell-On-Wheels" towns). Because the labor pool was drained by the gold rush, CP hired several thousand Chinees workers, the backboard be of the railroad's work force. It took 25,000 ties, 24 spikes per rail and 4,000 spikes for each mile laid. 12,000 blows for per mile to set the spikes. Miles laid per day became a contest between the two railroads. UP had laid 8.5 miles of track in one day and bet CP $10,000 they couldn't better the record. 

On April, 28, 1869, CP won that bet laying 10 miles and 56 feet of track.

As they neared each other in Utah, each railroad raced to grade more miles and claim more subsidies. They passed each other, and for 200 miles were grading on parallel grades. Congress then declared Promontory Summit as the meeting place. On May 10, 1869, two locomotives - CP's Jupiter and UP's No 119 - pulled up to the one-rail gap left in the track. A golden spike was symbolically tapped, a final iron spike driven to connect the railroads. CP he laid 690 miles of track, UP 1,086. They had crossed 1,776 miles of desert, rivers and mountains to bind the East and West. 

Antelope Island

This is a fascinating island in Salt Lake. The island is now a state park. There is a ranch, Garrett Ranch, located on the island at Garr Springs. The spring is the most consistent of the 40 springs on the island that the indigenous people and wildlife used long before Fielding Garr built his ranch. The archaeological findings have shown that there has been human activity at the springs for a least 1,000 years.

In 1848, Garr was assigned by the Mormon Church to establish a ranch on the island as a stronghold for managing the church tithing herds. The ranch was continually inhabited from then until 1981. 

The Mormon Church operated the ranch until the mid-1870's. At that time, it compassed the entire island. The church herds supported the Perpetual Emigration Fund, which assisted Mormon Church 

Members from Europe in making the trek across the Great Plains.  In 1869 the railroad came to Utah

as did federal surveys. Because the only improvements on the island were around the ranch, the government opened the rest of it to homesteading. Homesteading failed.

John Dooley Sr. Purchased the entire island for $1,000,000 and introduced bison to the island, but later sheep became the focus of the ranch. There were 10,000 sheep and the operation became one of the largest and most industrialized ranching efforts in the western United States. When it became unprofitable in the 1950's, due to a failing wool market, the ranch turned to cattle and continued as one of largest cattle operations in the state until the island became a state park in 1981.

The Salt Lake that surrounds the island is at an extremely low level. People still swim in it, as the pictures show and we waded in the water, as it is very shallow and quite smelly. The deepest part of the lake is only 33 feet. The salt content at the south end of the lake is 26% and a bit less in the north.

At the Garr Ranch

Paul found a friend. The dog walked between Paul's legs and stood there with his eyes closed enjoying the scratching.

Typical scenery. There's a small herd of bison on the salt flats in the background. You can tell how low the water is from this picture.

I found two German men floating in about 6 inches of water. They were exited to talk to, as they put it, "an authentic American tourist".

Jim and Barb got into the water also.

Salt Lake City Capitol

Today we took a tour of the Capitol building. It was completed in 1916 and is Italian Rennaissance 

Revival sitting on a hill with a beautiful view of the city.

There are two wings , both with beautiful skylights that give the building a wonderful bright and airy feel.

The center dome has paintings depicting state's history. This one is of Brigham Young arriving in Salt Lake City. The problem which the painting is that when he arrived, he was very ill and lying in the back of a wagon. The artist obviously could not paint him that way.

Beautiful marble columns throughout that came from Georgia. They are all solid marble.

Brontosaurus ???

University of Wyoming has a great display of dinosaur but bones. We went specifically to see a “complete” (60%) brontosaurus. It seems there really isn’t any such thing as a brontosaurus. The explanation is found in the “Bone Wars”. This was a very fierce competition between two paleontologists Marsh and Cope to find as many fossils as they could to outdo the other. In 1877 Marsh discovered a partial skeleton of a long necked dinosaur he dubbed Apatosaurus. It was missing a skull, so in 1883 when he published a reconstruction of his Apatosaurus, he used the head of another dinosaur (Thought to be a Camarasaurus) to complete the skeleton.

Two years later his collectors sent him another skeleton he thought  belonged to a different dinosaur that he named Brontosaurus. It turned out it was a more complete Aptosaurus, one that in his rush to one-up Cope, carelessly mistook for something new.

The mistake was spotted in 1903, but the name was entrenched in books and movies. The Carnegie Museum in Pittsburg even topped its Apatosaurus with the wrong head in 1932. In the 1970’s researchers determined the skull found in 1910 was a true Apatosaurus head and the correct head was placed on the museum’s skeleton.

The Brontosaurus was gone at last. The name means “thunder lizard”; whereas Apatosaurus means “deceptive lizard” which is a bit more boring.

The skull in the lower right hand corner is the one that was originally on the skeleton.

Laramie - Wyoming Territorial Prison

The Prison was created in July 1869 to house outlaws, violent and desparate men (and in total 13 women) who plagued the territory as more settlers moved into the area. In 1872 US Marshal Frank Walcott accepted the keys to the prison and Warden N. K. Boswell prepared for prisoners. The Auburn Prison System was adopted by Wyoming Territorial Prison (WTP). This system required convicts to be silent at all times, wear black and white striped uniforms, replace names with numbers, and move about the prison in "lockstep".

Work was mandatory, so they grew potatoes, cut ice blocks for the prison and UP railroad, quarried stone, manufactured bricks, brooms (which volunteers still make and sell today) and candles. So me convicts because me skilled artisans building furniture, horse-hair braided bridles, taxidermy and hand rolled cigars. Their labor was also hired out to local businesses and the prison received monies for its operations. Convicts used this opportunity to recruit future gangs and plan escapes.

Between 1872-1890 WTP was a Federal and later ( 1891-1903 ) a state penitentiary. During this time 1,063 convicts walked through the doors occupied the 5x8 cells (2 to a cell). Each cell contained 2 beds, a small bench and a chamber pot of sorts which was emptied twice a day. The cells had steel barred doors and one vent to bring in fresh air and one to take out bad air.  When Wyoming became a state in 1890 and a new state penal institution as built in Rawlins.

The prisons most famous convict was Butch Cassidy.

We almost left Jim there, but they wouldn't keep him.

Guards would lock themselves in this cage to guard themselves against the company convicts .

Butch Cassidy 

Meeting in Cheyenne

July 30,2915 we met Jim and Barb Mencin inCheyenne to begin our "Yellowstone trip".
We made an appointment to have a tour of the Capitol with our guide Lynette.

The original building  was completed in 1886 for less than $150,000. The east and weat wings were completed in 1890.

A couple of Capitol tidbits:

Outside the House Chamber there are a series of photos of the members as a group.  In 1915 on unhappy member grabbed the photo from the wall to hit it over the head of another legislator. The picture tore when the man put up his hand to shield himself. It has never been repaired.

One of the photos shows one legislator wearing a red tie while the entire picture is in back and white.

His friends thought it funny to color in this very shy representative after the picture was taken to ensure he would always be remembered.

The second spindle from the top of one of the staircases was installed upside down to reflect the carver's belief that only God makes things perfect.

The dome was originally copper, but later gilded with gold leaf it keep it from turning. It takes only one once of gold to gild the entire dome.

Barbara and I had our picture taken beside one of many boots found around town. This was is outside the Union Pacific Train Depot. Hope the guy doesn't cme back looking for his boot.

Union Pacific railroad had 25 Big Boy engines build to help transport goods over the mountains. The one in this photo, #4094, is found in a local park. They are now restoring Big Boy #4014 so it will be completely functional.