1. T. J. Warner, ed., The Domínguez-Escalante Journal (Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Press, 1976), 47–49.

2. Warner, Domínguez-Escalante Journal, 48, 50.

3. William Mulder and A. Russell Mortensen, Among the Mormons (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1958), 221, 220. Jim Bridger gave a similar description of Utah Valley. William Clayton, an early Mormon pioneer, records an interview with Jim Bridger June 28, 1847. He quotes Bridger as stating, “In the outlet of the Utah Lake which runs into the salt lake there is an abundance of blue grass and red and white clover. . . . There is timber all around the Utah Lake and plenty of good grass; not much of the wild sage only in small patches.” Bridger thought that “the Utah Lake is the best country in the vicinity of the Salt Lake.” William Clayton, William Clayton’s Journal (New York: Arno, 1973), 275, 277 (June 28, 1847).

4. A. L. Haines, Journal of a Trapper, Osborne Russell (Portland, Ore.: Champoeg, 1955), 120.

5. J. C. Frémont, Report of the Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains (n.p.: Readex Microprint, 1966), 160.

6. For presettlement descriptions of Cache Valley, see W. A. Ferris, Life in the Rocky Mountains, 1830–1835, comp. Herbert S. Auerbach (Salt Lake City: Rocky Mountain Book Shop, 1940); A. C. Hull Jr. and Mary Kay Hull, “Presettlement Vegetation of Cache Valley, Utah, and Idaho,” Journal of Range Management 27 (1974): 27–29. For Weber Valley (Round Prairie), see U.S. Senate, Report of the Secretary of War, Communicating, in Compliance with a Resolution of the Senate, Captain Simpson’s Report and a Map of Wagon Road Routes in Utah Territory, 35th Cong., 2nd sess., 1859, S. Ex. Doc. 40, 22. For Pavant Valley, see Sheldon Young’s statements in L. R. Hafen and A. W. Hafen, eds., Journals of Forty-Niners, Salt Lake to Los Angeles (Glendale: Arthur H. Clark, 1954), 60–66. For Juab Valley, see Keith Neldon Worthington, “A Century of Life in Nephi and Juab Valley, 1851–1951” (master’s thesis, Brigham Young University, 1958). For Grass Valley, see N. L. Nelson, “Fish Lake,” The Contributor 5 (August 1884): 435–40. For Tooele Valley, see Howard Stansbury, Exploration and Survey of the Great Salt Lake Valley of Utah (Philadelphia: Lippincott, Grambo, 1852). For Rush Valley, see Senate, Report of the Secretary of War, 25–26.

7. Clayton, Journal, 311 (July 22, 1847), 312 (July 23, 1847), 321 (July 26, 1847).

8. Russell R. Rich, Ensign to the Nations: A History of the Church from 1846 to the Present (Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University, 1972), 144–46.

9. Orson Pratt, in Journal of Discourses, 26 vols. (Liverpool: F. D. Richards, 1855–86), 17:34, April 6, 1874.

10. Alfred R. Golze, Reclamation in the United States (Caldwell, Idaho: Caxton Printers, 1961), 8.

11. Golze, Reclamation, 6.

12. Golze, Reclamation, 6.

13. Golze, Reclamation, 6.

14. Thomas G. Alexander, “Stewardship and Enterprise: The LDS Church and the Wasatch Oasis Environment, 1847–1930,” Western Historical Quarterly 25 (autumn 1994): 347.

15. Walter Cottam, “Is Utah Sahara Bound?” Bulletin of the University of Utah 17, no. 11 (February 1947): 6.

16. John Muir, Steep Trails, ed. W. F. Badé (Dunwoody, Ga.: N. S. Berg, 1970), 106–7.

17. Daniel H. Wells, in Journal of Discourses, 12:238, March 22, 1868.

18. Orson Pratt, in Journal of Discourses, 21:151, November 1, 1879.

19. Orson Pratt, in Journal of Discourses, 2:265–66, April 7, 1855; Brigham Young, in Journal of Discourses, 16:68, June 28, 1873; John Taylor, in Journal of Discourses, 11:165, October 7, 1865.

20. Brigham Young, in Journal of Discourses, 8:79–80, June 10, 1860.

21. Brigham Young, in Journal of Discourses, 1:203, April 6, 1852.

22. Daniel H. Wells, in Journal of Discourses, 12:236, March 22, 1868.

23. Heber C. Kimball, in Journal of Discourses, 5:22, April 6, 1857.

24. Orson Hyde, in Journal of Discourses, 11:149, October 7, 1865; Daniel H. Wells, in Journal of Discourses, 12:236–38, March 22, 1868; Orson Pratt, in Journal of Discourses, 17:35, April 6, 1874.

25. For a discussion on the spiritual nature of temporal things, see Orson Pratt, in Journal of Discourses, 21:200–201, November 12, 1879.

26. Orson Hyde, in Journal of Discourses, 11:149–50, October 7, 1865.

27. Dan L. Flores, “Agriculture, Mountain Ecology, and the Land Ethic: Phases of the Environmental History of Utah,” in Working the Range: Essays on the History of Western Land Management and the Environment, ed. John R. Wunder (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1985), 164, 165, 174. See also Alexander, “Stewardship and Enterprise,” 343.

28. Alexander, “Stewardship and Enterprise,” 362.

29. Alexander, “Stewardship and Enterprise,” 344; italics in original.

30. Alexander, “Stewardship and Enterprise,” 349.

31. Golze, Reclamation, 7.

32. Orson Pratt, in Journal of Discourses, 17:34, April 6, 1874.

33. Golze, Reclamation, 8.

34. Golze, Reclamation, 7.

35. Golze, Reclamation, 7.

36. Earl M. Christensen and Myrtis A. Hutchinson, “Historical Observations on the Ecology of Rush and Tooele Valleys, Utah,” Utah Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters 42, no. 1 (1965): 94.

37. Alexander, “Stewardship and Enterprise,” 353.

38. John Taylor, in Journal of Discourses, 11:165, October 7, 1865.

39. “Greeting from the First Presidency,” Messages of the First Presidency, comp. James R. Clark, 6 vols. (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1970), 4:93–94 (December 17, 1904).

40. Alexander, “Stewardship and Enterprise,” 355.

41. George Albert Smith, in Journal of Discourses, 9:113–14, September 10, 1861.

42. S. L. Welsh and others, eds., “A Utah Flora,” in Great Basin Naturalist Memoir No. 9, (Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Press, 1987), 425.

43. Orson Hyde, in Journal of Discourses, 11:149, October 7, 1865.

44. Alexander, “Stewardship and Enterprise,” 345.

45. S. L. Welsh, C. R. Nelson, and K. H. Thorne, “Naturalization of Plant Species in Utah—1842 to Present,” in Noxious Range Weeds, ed. L. F. James and others (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1991), 17–29.

46. Welsh and others, “Utah Flora,” 710.

47. Welsh, Nelson, and Thorne, “Naturalization of Plant Species,” 17–29.

48. Welsh, Nelson, and Thorne, “Naturalization of Plant Species,” 17–29.

49. A. C. Hull Jr., “Rangeland Use and Management in the Mormon West” (paper presented at the Symposium on Agriculture, Food, and Man—Century of Progress, Provo, Utah, March 29, 1976), 4.

50. Hull, “Rangeland Use,” 9.

51. C. S. Peterson, “Small Holding Land Patterns in Utah and the Problem of Forest Watershed Management,” Journal of Forest History 17, no. 2 (1973): 5–6.

52. L. A. Stoddart, A. D. Smith, and T. W. Box, Range Management (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1975), 87–88.

53. Walter P. Cottam, Our Renewable Wild Lands—a Challenge (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1961), 25.

54. Hull, “Rangeland Use,” 12.

55. Christensen and Hutchinson, “Historical Observations,” 97.

56. Christensen and Hutchinson, “Historical Observations,” 99.

57. Cottam, “Our Renewable Wild Lands,” 116, 118.

58. H. H. Bancroft, History of Utah (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1964), 569–70.

59. Cottam, “Is Utah Sahara Bound?” 15.

60. Cottam, “Is Utah Sahara Bound?” 15.

61. For example, see E. M. Christensen and S. L. Welsh, “Presettlement Vegetation of the Valleys of Western Summit and Wasatch Counties, Utah,” Utah Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters 40, no. 2 (1963): 163–74; W. R. Hanson, “The Ecology of Agropyron inerme on Protected and Heavily Grazed Range Land in Cache Valley, Utah” (master’s thesis, Utah State University, 1939); John E. Weaver and Frederic E. Clements, Plant Ecology, 2d ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1929).

62. Alexander, “Stewardship and Enterprise,” 359.

63. Joseph F. Smith, Gospel Doctrine: Selections from the Sermons and Writings of Joseph F. Smith (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1998), 350.

64. Alexander, “Stewardship and Enterprise,” 357.

65. Alexander, “Stewardship and Enterprise,” 360.

66. “Utah’s First Forest’s First 75 Years: Uinta National Forest” (Intermountain Region Forest Service U.S.D.A., n.d.), 18, 31–32.

67. Alexander, “Stewardship and Enterprise,” 360.

68. Christensen and Hutchinson, “Historical Observations,” 98–99.

69. “Utah’s First Forest’s First 75 Years,” 47.

70. Garrett Hardin, “The Tragedy of the Commons,” Science 162 (1968): 1243–48.

71. Hardin, “Tragedy of the Commons,” 1243.

Terry B. Ball

BYU Studies Publications