Melvin L. Bashore

Melvin L. Bashore recently retired as a curator of historic sites with the LDS Church Historical Department. He received his BFA in modern painting from the University of Utah, his MEd from University of Missouri–St. Louis, and his MLS in library science from BYU. He worked for the Church Historical Department for thirty-eight years and conceived and developed the Mormon Pioneer Overland Travel database (http://history.lds.org/overlandtravels/). In 2010, he received a Distinguished Service Award from the Oregon-California Trails Association for his work on this project. He has been researching trail mortality for more than a decade. He has also published numerous articles in wide-ranging historical journals. His recent publications include “‘The Bloodiest Drama Ever Perpetrated on American Soil’: Staging the Mountain Meadows Massacre for Entertainment,” Utah Historical Quarterly 80 (summer 2012): 258–71, and “Quitting Coffee and Tea: Marketing Alternative Hot Drinks to Mormons,” Journal of Mormon History 42, no. 1 (2016): 73–104.