Chapter Seven: Civic Pioneer Day Variation and Inter-cultural Interaction

The presence or absence of a Pioneer Day celebration is not a straightforward indicator of a given community’s self-awareness as part of Mormon Country. Several factors have influenced Pioneer Day’s pattern of distribution across the Western landscape. This chapter examines those influences, and suggests ways of interpreting their significance in understanding the character and values of contemporary Mormonism in its homeland.

Patterns of Pioneer Day Presence and Absence: 
July 4th and July 24th

One of the main factors determining the presence or absence of Pioneer Day celebrations is whether or not a town celebrates Independence Day. Two major events in one month tax the energy of even the most festive citizens, so most towns usually celebrate only one or the other.¹ Only the town of Kanab in Southern Utah valiantly attempts to do both. Though one Kanab resident suggested, “We’ll probably have to give up one or the other eventually. Its too hard to do both.”² Many similar-sized municipalities have entered into non-competition arrangements.³ For example, Salt Lake City always celebrates July ^[185] 24th and never celebrates the 4th of July, while 50 miles away Mormondom’s second major metropolitan area Provo/Orem always celebrates Independence Day but never Pioneer Day.⁴ People from neighboring towns often attend other towns’ celebrations of the holiday’s that their own town does not observe.

This 4th/24th pattern is recapitulated with Brigham City/Ogden as well as in many rural areas such as Blanding/Monticello; Parowan/Cedar City; Oakley/Kamas; Delta/Hinkley; Price/Wellington; Boulder/Escalante; Soda Springs, Idaho/Bancroft, Idaho; Alamo, Nevada/Panaca, Nevada; and Show Low, Arizona/Snowflake, Arizona. In Southern Alberta’s Mormon region, the same pattern applies to Canada Day which also happens in July. Glenwood, Alberta celebrates the 24th of July while Hillspring, Alberta has its Canada Day festivities on July 1st.

This pattern of “divvying up” Independence Day and Pioneer Day does not necessarily mean the town with the 24th is more “truly Mormon” than the town with the 4th. For example, although Ogden has one of the oldest significant Gentile populations in Utah, it celebrates the 24th while nearby Brigham City, which is much more predominantly Mormon, celebrates the 4th. Likewise, while St. Anthony’s population is more homogeneously Mormon than Idaho Falls, St. Anthony celebrates a civic Pioneer Day while Idaho Falls does not. Provo/Orem is ^[186] over 90 percent LDS while Salt Lake City is less than 50 percent. Of course Salt Lake City has a special historical position as the first Mormon settlement, world headquarters of the Church, and home of the oldest and biggest Pioneer Day celebration.

In a variant of the 4th/24th sharing model, Millard County’s county seat of Fillmore hosts a significant Independence Day while the smaller surrounding villages of Kanosh, Meadow, Flowell, and Holden each have their own little Pioneer Day celebrations. In Sevier County, the county seat of Richfield takes on celebrations for the 4th while Monroe (designated among the villages of Austin, Central, Joseph, Elsinore, and Annabella) has one of the major Pioneer Day Celebrations in central Utah. This Millard County pattern is inverted on a larger scale in Idaho where St. Anthony celebrates a large Pioneer Day and nearby Idaho Falls, Rexburg, and Ashton all celebrate smaller Independence Day celebrations.

As was explored in Chapter Two, in a certain limited sense, July 4th and July 24th function as the same holiday in Mormon Country. They are celebrated in the same month in much the same way—with barbecues, parades, fireworks, morning breakfasts and flag raisings, dramatic presentations, choral performances, rodeos, arts and crafts fairs, sporting events, and family reunions. American flags are in abundant display on Pioneer Day and only a little more so on Independence Day. When asked about the major differences between how the two holidays are celebrated one Idaho informant replied, “You’re a little more likely to see wagons, handcarts, and people dressed in pioneer costume on July 24th than on the 4th. ^[187] Other than that they are about the same.”⁵ Speakers are more likely to discuss local settlement history on Pioneer Day and national history on Independence Day.⁶ Beyond this, there is little on the surface to distinguish the two celebrations as far as celebratory activities go.

There is more to these similarities than a homogenizing “de-sacralization” of both holidays into pleasure-seeking spectacles and community and family get-togethers that are little more than government-mandated recreational days having little to do with remembering the pioneers’ arrival in Utah or the Birth of America.⁷ Both holidays have always been put to use by revelers in ways that are unrelated to filial piety or gratitude for the founding fathers’ or pioneers’ achievements. However, a crucial reason for the two holidays’ similarity lies in their similar cultural meaning.

Mormons always considered themselves true patriots and republicans before their Exodus.⁸ While dissatisfaction with the U.S. government was at an all time low after the Mormon expulsion from Nauvoo in 1846, and several Latter-day Saint leaders were vocal in bidding the United States good riddance for ^[188] Mexico, Mormons felt they had escaped a nation that had abandoned its own divinely inspired principles, and Mormons had spirited away those principles for safe keeping in the isolated valleys of the Rocky Mountains.⁹ As one might imagine, the First Amendment’s protection of religious liberty stood foremost among those transgressed principles in the minds of Mormons at the time. Brigham Young saw to it that Salt Lake City laws provided for religious freedoms modeled after those of William Penn’s Philadelphia. On several occasions, the Church donated land for other denominations to build churches. Mormons imagined their provisional state of Deseret as a refuge to which the oppressed might flee. It would perhaps become another American nation not unlike the sister republics built on Americanist principles but existing as politically independent nation-states that Thomas Jefferson envisioned, or more likely a state in the United States (back when statehood provided a great deal of autonomy). Either way, Latter-day Saints foresaw that their society would be ultimately independent and finally triumphant.¹⁰

The Mormon escape to the Rocky Mountains, with its self-conscious shucking off of tyranny and oppression, recapitulated the American revolution. Mormons saw their endeavor in the desert as a second try at what America had tried and, from the Mormon’s point of view, failed to accomplish. Brigham Young’s counselor, Daniel H. Wells, soon after the arrival of the Latter-day Saints ^[189] in Utah proclaimed of July 24th, “This day, in reality, is the Anniversary of our Birth-day as a free people.”¹¹ And one hundred years later Western writer Wallace Stegner called Pioneer Day the “Mormon Fourth of July.”¹² American patriotism and Deseret patriotism were intermingled and not fully distinguishable in the nineteenth-century Mormon mind. This can be seen in Mormons’ parading as relics the Church’s prize copies of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States in prominent positions in early Pioneer Day processions.¹³ Mormons never saw this dual loyalty and dual consciousness as contradictory. They never even saw it as dual. Mormonism was Americanism in its truest expression. Today, when American Mormons have long enjoyed full civil rights everywhere in America, Pioneer Day as “Mormon Independence Day” has lost much of is salience, but not all.

Pioneer Day and Independence Day highlight the paradox of Mormonism being the religion to break most radically from American culture yet still be the most American of all religions. No other culture region in America has an annual civic celebration that competes with the fourth of July so strongly that many towns do not even celebrate Independence Day. But no other region has a regionally unique celebration so similar to the 4th of July in its forms and meanings either. ^[190]

Patterns of Pioneer Day Presence and Absence: 
Other Variations

Activity sharing: In addition to dividing celebratory time and energy with Independence Day, other patterns of Pioneer Day spatial organization have emerged. Sometimes, the festivities of one celebration will be divided between two towns. Weston and Clifton, Idaho have entered into an arrangement where the parade takes place in Weston and everything else—the clogging show, live music, children’s games, and the patriotic narration that goes with the “best fireworks display around”—takes place in Clifton.¹⁴

Informants in Clifton and Weston suggested that this arrangement allowed both communities to participate in hosting and organizing the celebration. “We are both too small to each put on a big celebration so we do it together.”¹⁵

Repeated activity: Early mid-day on Pioneer Day, Spring City, Utah holds a 50 to 60 entrant Pioneer Day parade. Later in the afternoon the same floats and same participants repeat the parade up the road in Fairview. The parade draws participants and observers from all over Sanpete County. While Spring City and Fairview hold a twice-performed parade, each village has its own breakfast, reading in the church, and other events.^16 [191]

Rotation: In south eastern Arizona’s island of Mormon Country, the nearly contiguous towns of Pima, Thatcher, and Safford rotate a yearly celebration of Pioneer Day. Each town’s main street hosts the parade for the whole area once every three years.¹⁷

Designated town: In Sevier County, Monroe hosts an annual celebration. A Monroe Pioneer Day committee member explained, “It’s a great big deal” that draws people from nearby Austin, Joseph, Sevier, Elsinore, Central, Richfield, Venice, Glenwood and Annabella which have no celebration of their own.¹⁸ In the predominantly Mormon Big Horn Basin of Wyoming, the small town of Cowley’s Pioneer Day likewise serves the surrounding towns of Deaver, Lovell, Byron, and Garland.¹⁹ Also in the Big Horn Basin, Burlington’s celebration serves Otto and Emblem.²⁰ Salt Lake City’s celebration is not only the largest in Mormondom, but it has out-competed those of most other municipalities in the Salt Lake Valley.^{21 [192]} Many villages dot north eastern Utah’s Uintah Basin, but Vernal, the largest town, dominates Pioneer Day festivities.²²

Isolated town: Ramah, New Mexico and Manassa, Colorado are lone Mormon-colonized towns isolated from the main body of the Mormon Culture Region. These towns’ Pioneer Day celebrations have served as reminders of the their Mormon identity.²³ According to one informant, besides Jack Dempsey’s birth place museum, Pioneer Day is the “biggest deal in town.”²⁴

A month of celebration: Four nearby towns in Alberta’s Mormon Country, Hillspring, Stirling, Glenwood, and Cardston put on staggered celebrations that run through July and the first part of August. They are respectively: Canada Day on July 1st; Settler’s Day on July 14th–18th; Mormon Pioneer Day on July 24th; and Heritage Day during the second week of August. Several informants in this area report that these events blur together in a month and a half long celebration in which what is being celebrated on a given day diminishes in importance.²⁵ The summer, the harvest, Canada, and Mormon pioneers are themes in the back of peoples’ minds that have called forth the celebrations. To fit better into this ^[193] pattern, Glenwood, Alberta abandoned its long-running July 24th celebration that competed with Stirling’s and began celebrating the founding of Glenwood on the empty days in mid-July between Canada Day and Pioneer Day. A Glenwood community organizer explains, “We thought it was a great idea. The whole area was celebrating all month long and the focus shifted from one town to another; we take turns putting on and participating in celebrations and no town gets left out! We just had to come up with our own excuse for a celebration and everybody was happy.”²⁶

Competing celebrations: Joseph City, Snowflake, and St. John’s, Arizona, despite being only about forty miles apart from each other, each put on their own full-fledged Pioneer Day celebrations.²⁷ It may be that they exceed critical distance from each other past which towns celebrate their own celebrations rather than enter into celebration trading or sharing arrangements.

No celebration: Many historically and predominantly Mormon towns do not have Pioneer Day celebrations for various reasons. As already discussed, some Pioneer Day celebrations disappeared through arrangements made with nearby settlements. In what is now essentially an autonomous Phoenix suburb, the Mormon-settled town of Mesa, Arizona and its “little sister” village of Lehi have no civic Pioneer Day celebration “if for no other reason than it tends to be over ^[194] 110 degrees outside in July.”²⁸ Littlefield, Arizona and Mesquite, Nevada may not celebrate for similar reasons.²⁹ However, Mesquite’s lack of a civic Pioneer Day celebration may have another reason. Mesquite’s main thoroughfares, as in most Nevada border towns, drips with big and bold advertisements for burlesques and casinos. The incongruity and potential for political tension of celebrating Mormonism along such thoroughfares is perhaps to much for local Latter-day Saint and Gentile folks to stomach.

The presence of such advertising suggests another factor in the absence of Pioneer Day—“de-Mormonification.” Many settlements first settled by Mormons have become Mormon minority towns, including Las Vegas and Mesa. The isolated Mormon village of Moab in south eastern Utah was overrun by Gentiles during the 1950s Uranium Rush and again in the late twentieth century by mountain bike riding neo-hippies living out their Edward Abbey fantasies.³⁰ Today Moab is only about 30 percent LDS, which made celebrating Pioneer Day seem anachronistic. Indeed, Moab recently discontinued its Pioneer Day Celebration because the local Mormons felt that “the celebration was benefiting people who put little time or effort into its organization.”³¹ Similarly Hagerman, Idaho, a ^[195] historically Mormon, but increasingly non-Mormon, town in highly mobile and predominantly Gentile western Idaho discontinued Pioneer Day because the celebration had taken on a flavor not in harmony with Mormon values. “Too rowdy and too much drinking” were the reasons explained to me by the volunteer at Hagerman’s historical center.³²

The increasingly Gentile character of many Mormon towns such as Salt Lake City and Moab, Utah as well as Mesa, Arizona, and Hagerman, Idaho has been a marked trend over the last two decades as the Intermountain West has seen more growth from internal immigration than any other American region. While Mormons continue to make up an ever larger percentage of the national population and gained 15,000 new members in Arizona from year end 1993 to year end 1995—one of the highest gross rates of numerical growth of any state in the nation—the percentage of Mormons in Arizona slipped from 6.4 percent to 6.3 percent. Idaho similarly grew by 11,000 members but slipped from 28.5 percent to 27.8 percent Latter-day Saint, and Utah grew by 59,000 members but slipped from 76.0 percent to 75.2 percent Latter-day Saint over the same period of time.³³ The decline of Pioneer Day in some towns in these areas is in part evidence of the dramatic influx of Americans into the modern West.

Some towns abandoned Pioneer Day altogether when insurance liability concerns forced an end to such central Pioneer Day events as rodeos and sporting ^[196] events. My informant in Ramah, New Mexico lamented that they should have thought of replacement events but that it was “too late to revive it now.”³⁴ Some Pioneer Day celebrations were simply out-competed by a nearby rival. Idaho Falls, a Mormon temple town, once put on a thriving Pioneer Day Celebration that is now defunct. Nearby St. Anthony’s celebration now dominates Idaho’s Snake River Valley. “We just put on a bigger, better show,” is how one St. Anthony Pioneer Day organizer explained it.³⁵ Other towns’ lack of a Pioneer Day were inexplicable to my informants. When I asked the mayor of Castle Valley’s town of Ferron, Utah if they celebrated Pioneer Day he replied, “Gee, no we really should, but I don’t know why we don’t.”³⁶

A few towns deep inside Mormon Country such as Price and Park City are historically mining towns whose histories have been relatively uninfluenced by Mormon settlement patterns. Price is the most religiously and ethnically diverse town off of the Wasatch Front. The Latter-day Saint Church claims only about half of the town’s inhabitants as members. In addition to the common nineteenth century Mormon ethnicities of English, Welsh, Scandinavians, Germans, and Swiss, Price is populated by descendants of the Italians, Serbs, and Greeks who came to the American West in the early twentieth century to mine. In late July, instead of ^[197] Pioneer Day, Price celebrates International Days whose main events are an ethnic food festival and folk dancing program that draws top acts from Eastern Europe.³⁷

Revitalized celebrations: These disappearing celebrations do not necessarily represent a trend of overall decline in Pioneer Day. Several towns have recently added or successfully revived Pioneer Day celebrations. In Arizona, Thatcher, Pima, and Safford have revived and recently expanded their shared celebration due to the increased interest that has come with the area’s population growth.³⁸

As transportation among the growing municipalities of the Salt Lake Valley improved, the flagship Pioneer Day celebration in Salt Lake City exerted an increasingly strong “sucking effect” that focused Pioneer Day attention and energies on the capital. This effect spelled the demise of many Pioneer Day celebrations in towns in the greater Salt Lake area. In all of Salt Lake Valley, only Draper and West Valley City also celebrate Pioneer Day. And both of these celebrations are revivals of defunct celebrations. Draper and West Valley City recently began celebrating Pioneer Day on the Saturday of the nearest weekend to the 24th rather than on the 24th itself.³⁹ This way, these cities do not compete with Salt Lake City’s Pioneer Day celebration which is always on the 24th unless ^[198] it falls on a Sunday. In this case Pioneer Day is celebrated on the 23rd or the 25th. Informants in both Draper and West Valley City report great success and attendance numbering in the thousands with this new arrangement. A Draper Pioneer Day organizer remarked, “It has really revitalized the sense of community in our town. It has helped us feel less a suburb of Salt Lake and more our own town—on Pioneer Day at least anyway.”⁴⁰

Mormon Historical Pageants

Some communities lack a Pioneer Day celebration in part because their yearly celebratory energies focus on something arguably even more Mormon—historical pageants. While Mormon religious practice does not approach the confluence of the theatrical and the sacred that Clifford Geertz observes among Balinese Hindus, perhaps no art is more integral than drama to the Mormon experience.⁴¹ This is evident in many facets of Mormon living. The temple ceremonies that Latter-day Saint regard as essential for attaining the highest degree of salvation are presented as an interactive sacred drama involving characters from Old and New Testament history.⁴² The standard architectural plan for Latter-day Saint chapels has long included a stage for youth musical theater ^[199] performances. Before leaving to their respective fields of service, Latter-day Saint missionaries practice teaching and using interpersonal skills through role playing exercises at the Missionary Training Center in Provo, Utah. Salt Lake City’s theater gained national renown as one of the grandest buildings west of the Mississippi in the mid-nineteenth century. With so many other priorities in building a civilization in the wilderness, it is telling that Mormons would devote so much energy on their capital’s theater so soon after arriving in the Great Salt Lake valley. Under Brigham Young’s close direction, early Mormon dramatists saw their work as more than just a recreational diversion; they saw it as a social force for the refinement and betterment of a participatory communitarian society.⁴³

Mormon-themed historical pageants represent the fullest modern continuation of Latter-day Saint Church patronage of, and popular Mormon enthusiasm for, dramatic endeavor. They draw hundreds of thousands of Latter-day Saint and Gentiles alike to Hill Cumorah, New York; Nauvoo, Illinois; Independence, Missouri; and other places with historical significance for Mormons.⁴⁴ Pageants performed at these sites map out a contemporary sacred space drawn from the outlines of Mormon historical experience as will be shown in chapter eight.

Pageants have emerged in places that have become important to historically-conscious Mormons since their arrival in Utah as well. For example, ^[200] the temple grounds in Oakland, California, and the country music Mecca of Branson, Missouri host Mormon historical pageants, as do historically Mormon towns in the West such as St. George, Castle Valley, and Manti, Utah, and Mesa, Arizona. While the Manti, Mesa, and Hill Cumorah pageants have long histories, the LDS pageant production enterprise has exploded in recent years. The St. George, Branson, Nauvoo, and Castle Valley Pageants are among the many that have appeared since the late 1980s.

These extravagant spectacles employ hundreds of young Mormon volunteers as cast members and often utilize spectacular pyrotechnics and visual effects. They recreate and celebrate historical episodes from the Bible, the founding of the United States, the Book of Mormon, and especially in the case of the Manti, Castle Valley, St. George, Oakland, and Branson pageants, the trek of Utah’s pioneers.⁴⁵ Plot setting and narrative content differs from pageant to pageant, but they are always historically based and always highlight God’s hand at work in history.

“America’s Witness for Christ” at the Hill Cumorah in western New York, written by Hugo and Nebula award-winning science fiction author Orson Scott Card, begins with a white-clad individual, representing the Savior, descending from the sky to visit the inhabitants of the Ancient Americas. It includes such dramatic effects as a 37 ft. high erupting volcano, fireballs, earthquakes, and ^[201] lightning presented on a stage which is half the length of a football field.⁴⁶ Hill Cumorah, the site from which Joseph Smith retrieved the Golden Plates, hosts the flagship Mormon pageant.

The “Mormon Miracle” Pageant at Manti, Utah—a temple-town with no Pioneer Day celebration—is similarly spectacular as it recounts a family’s conversion to Mormonism, trek across the plains and eventual settlement in Manti. This family story is interspersed with scenes of Joseph Smith’s history and episodes from the Book of Mormon as the Manti-bound pioneer family members become aware of them.

Not to be outdone by the Manti Saints in Sanpete Valley to their east, Castle Valley residents now produce the “Castle Valley Pageant” that alternates among the major towns in Castle Valley. Following Manti’s lead of employing a cast of hundreds and spectacular effects and lighting, this pageant portrays the trials, triumphs and tragedies of some of the first settlers of Castle Valley as they were directed by Brigham Young to homestead the area.⁴⁷

Every Easter season, Mesa, Arizona Latter-day Saints produce “Jesus the Christ” at the Arizona Temple. This musical portrays events from Jesus’ life as recorded in the New Testament. Arizonans regard this pageant along with the Temple’s Christmas light display as among the top “things to do” during the Christmas season in the greater Phoenix area. Latter-day Saints in Calgary, ^[202] Alberta, a metropolitan area north of Alberta’s rural Mormon cultural region, produce a nativity pageant similar to Mesa’s Easter pageant.

The sprawling “And It Came to Pass” at the Oakland LDS Temple grounds follows a familiar historical line of events from Mormon popular historiographic understanding—Christ’s teachings and crucifixion, Constantine’s making Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire, debates about the nature of the Trinity, the early Protestant Reformers, migration to the Americas and American religious diversity, the restoration through Joseph Smith of the original Church and its subsequent persecution. These events culminate in the Saint’s trek West to find refuge.

“UTAH! America’s Most Spectacular Outdoor Musical” at the new multi-million dollar Tuacahn amphitheater near St. George, Utah seeks to attract tourists on their way into or out of Las Vegas. This private non-Church sponsored recounting of the adventures of Jacob Hamblin, the famous Mormon explorer and missionary to the Indians, downplays the religious aspects of his story and focus instead on his rugged pioneering.

“A Frontier Story: 1838” in Independence, Missouri recounts the Latter-day Saints’ ill-fated attempt to settle Jackson County, Missouri. “Martin Harris, the Man Who Knew” at Clarkston, Utah tells the story of Martin Harris, one of the original Three Witnesses to the Golden Plates who left Mormonism for many years and returned later in life to live out is final years in Clarkston. The song and dance of the “City of Joseph” pageant complements the tourist offerings at Nauvoo, Illinois. The Church has reclaimed through re-purchase much of this historic Mormon town from which it was ejected over a hundred and fifty years ^[203] ago. Today Nauvoo is a kind of Mormon version of Colonial Williamsburg, “authentically” restored without the nineteenthth century smells and deep mud streets, but with a full compliment of volunteers donned in historical re-creationist garb who are knowledgeable about life in “days of yore.”

During the 1996 centennial of Utah statehood, other towns held pageants that may yet turn into yearly traditions: “Land of Our Destiny Pageant,” in Orderville, July 25–27; “In Our Lovely Deseret Pageant,” in Delta, July 18–20; “A Divine Gift Pageant,” in Vernal, August 1–3, 6–10; and “Chief Kanosh Pageant,” in Fillmore, August 15–17.⁴⁸

Pageants and anti-Mormons: Mormon historical pageants dot the traditional Mormon culture region and urban areas with historically important and newly emerging significant Mormon minorities. Like Pioneer Day celebrations, pageants have become a focal point for inter-cultural and inter-religious contact. The Mesa, Arizona and Manti, Utah pageants in particular have become focal points for anti-Mormon activity.⁴⁹ While the virulent anti-Semitism and anti-Catholicism of nineteenth-century Protestant reformers and Nativists has disappeared from all except the most disreputable fringes of contemporary ^[204] evangelicalism, anti-Mormonism partaking of this same spirit continues among many conservative and fundamentalist Protestants.⁵⁰

For the most part, anti-Mormon demonstrations at LDS pageants have been restrained and have not unduly disrupted the efforts of Mormons and their friends to enjoy peaceful and inspirational experiences at Church pageants. However, some efforts to claim Latter-day Saint Christians for “orthodox” Christianity have been intentionally provocative. In Mesa the fundamentalist Alpha and Omega Ministries and others have picketed the LDS Easter pageant at the Mesa, Arizona temple for over ten years confronting Mormons and their friends on the way to the pageant. At one recent pageant, a 9mm slug from an unseen assailant wounded a Mormon woman near the temple grounds. Some Mesa police suspect the shooting indicates an escalation of anti-Mormon activity from aggressive and confrontational denunciations of Mormon theology into violent assaults.⁵¹

For decades, the central Utah town of Manti has produced a sprawling Mormon pioneer historical pageant that today draws over a hundred thousand people each summer. In recent years, evangelical anti-Mormons from far and wide have discovered the Manti Miracle pageant deep in the heart of Mormon country, and they have begun to provide their own spectacles to compete with the pageant. Among the anti-Mormon groups at Manti in 1994 were an evangelical ^[205] youth camp that came down from Canada to perform street theater; a minister from Ogden blaring his opinions with a bull horn and wearing a t-shirt on which was printed Joseph Smith’s face encircled by and crossed through with a red line; and a Four-Square gospel Church congregation who came all the way from San Diego to hand out pamphlets. With no regard to the pageant organizers’ constraints of time, budget, and artistic license, one pamphlet circulating at the pageant not only critiqued Mormon theology but decried the historical inaccuracy of the pageant’s portrayal of Latter-day Saint refugees fleeing with handcarts to Illinois in 1839.⁵²

These kinds of demonstrations have turned many Mormon pageants into multi-vocalic spectacles offering diametrically opposed interpretations of the Mormon Experience. A little-studied phenomenon, anti-Mormonism has emerged as America’s contribution to worldwide religious prejudices at the same time Mormonism has emerged as America’s contribution to the “canon” of world religions.^53 [206]

Pioneer Days with Special Meanings

Some Pioneer Day celebrations signify more than local Mormon community consciousness. Latter-day Saint pioneers arrived in Snowflake, Arizona on July 24th, 1878.⁵⁴ So Pioneer Day in Snowflake commemorates the town’s founding as well as Brigham Young’s arrival in the Salt Lake Valley. Lava Hot Springs, Idaho’s founder’s day also occurred on Pioneer Day. Since about 50 percent of Lava Hot Springs’ population is not LDS, Pioneer Day organizers there have focused on the founding of the town rather than Brigham Young’s arrival in the Salt Lake Valley for the day’s commemorative activities.⁵⁵

Other celebrations have changed in more dramatic syncretic ways. Kanosh, Utah holds its largest yearly community celebration on July 24th. Its organizers do not call it Pioneer Day anymore, but “community day” instead. The anglo-Mormon settled town of Kanosh is the nearest white settlement to the mostly non-LDS Kanosh Indian Village. To many in this predominantly Native American town, the arrival of the Mormon pioneers does not signify the triumphant claiming of their ancestor’s religious freedom and the founding of the Mormon homeland. Instead, as Kanosh’s anglo-Mormon mayor explained, “it is the day the interlopers came, as far as the Indians are concerned.” The July 24th “community celebration” draws participants from both Kanosh and the reservation as well as many Hispanics. The activities for this celebration are much the same as for any other community—a parade, market fair, music, family ^[212] reunions, barbecues—but public references to LDS pioneer heritage are avoided.⁵⁶ In Canada, Magrath, Alberta has also become increasingly made up of a variety of religious and irreligious people.⁵⁷ Like Kanosh, it has kept its July 24th summer celebration but it has become less and less markedly Mormon.

Like Wyoming’s Big Horn Basin and Arizona’s Little Colorado River settlements, the villages of Sanford, Eastdale, and primarily Manassa in Colorado’s San Luis Valley constitute an “ethnic island”⁵⁸ of Mormon culture well within the Hispano⁵⁹ culture region that has extended up from New Mexico well into much of Southern Colorado.⁶⁰ Primarily Mormon when settled in the late 1870s–1890s, today the population of San Luis Valley is about 50 percent mostly LDS Anglo and about 50 percent mostly Catholic Hispano. Its full-blown Pioneer Day celebration draws about 10,000 people and enjoys such “big league” celebratory flourishes as F-16 fly-bys from a nearby Air Force base.⁶¹ Like all Pioneer Day parades, Manassa’s is open to floats made by non-Mormons on non-LDS themes. San Luis Valley’s Catholics take full ^[213] advantage of this, making Pioneer Day a combination Mormon parade/ Catholic procession. Both religions display their symbols publicly in the same joint event. The organizers with whom I spoke were pleased that their celebration had come to reflect the diversity of the area. “We’re glad the Mormon origins of Pioneer Day don’t keep people of other faiths away. In fact . . . we’re glad that the whole community sees it as a community day where we can express our unity and diversity.”⁶²

The affinity here between Hispanos and Mormons in San Luis Valley, at least on this occasion, can be explained, perhaps in part, by Richard L. Nostrand’s observation that unlike the geographically disassociated farmsteads and loose communities of other Anglos in the region, rural Mormons have traditionally been a communitarian “village people” like the Hispanos.⁶³ Both Hispanos and Mormons established a homeland and made their own distinctive cultural imprint on the American West. Except for Indian Nations, they are probably the two most distinctive regional cultures in the West if not the whole country. The San Luis Valley is both cultural zones at once—an outpost of the Mormon culture region in the expanded Hispano Culture Region.

The “multiculturalization” of Mormon Culture Region Pioneer Day celebrations seems likely to continue. Salt Lake City’s parade has featured Catholic and Jewish floats for decades. In response to the questionnaire item, “Do ^[214] non-LDS churches and organizations participate in your parade?” many replied “yes” and many others replied “no, but that sure is a good idea.”

Unlike Mormon theology, whose content passes through strict hierarchical channels that maintain doctrinal uniformity even as Mormonism has spread across the globe, Pioneer Day celebrations, as an aspect of Mormon folk culture, are free to adapt and respond to local conditions. Popular stereotypes about rural whites might lead one to suspect that the Pioneer Day celebrations of traditional Mormon settlements might respond with “wagon circling” to increasing local cultural diversity. Instead, Pioneer Day organizers in Kanosh and Manassa have followed a kind of ground-up multiculturalism to make a historically Mormon celebration open and responsive to all cultural groups within a geographic locale. In Kanosh, celebration organizers have down-played the Mormon roots of the celebration while Manassa’s Pioneer Day is a pastiche of religious and ethnic themes. In both communities, organizers seemed proud of their efforts at inclusiveness rather than disappointed at the lack of “pure Mormonness” in their celebrations. Of course, opinions in the community may vary, but the limitations of this study suggest interesting sites for further research into the contact zones between the Mormon Culture Region and Native American and Hispano cultural regions.

Conclusions

The stark contrast in the ways in which religious and cultural diversity manifest themselves at Pioneer Day events as opposed to pageant events is striking. No evidence surfaced of organized counter-events to Pioneer Day celebrations in any town during my telephone interviews or fieldwork. On the ^[215] other hand, critics of Latter-day Saint religion seek out LDS pageants as opportunities to stage counter-demonstrations promoting a different set of religious beliefs.

A key to understanding these differing outsider responses to two seemingly similar varieties of Mormon popular historical expression is in a fact that both Mormons and their fundamentalist Protestant detractors can agree on; pageants are a source for the official religious story of Mormonism as The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints would like it to be seen.

While the Church’s ecclesiastical organization has, by and large, divorced itself from any official oversight responsibility for the numerous civic Pioneer Day celebrations which now operate as folk festivals, it has seen pageants as an opportunity for proselytizing and has, upon invitation, taken over the sponsorship, financial responsibility, and script control from the local communities in which they emerged.⁶⁴ LDS missionaries canvas the crowd at Church-sponsored pageants extending invitations to pageant attenders to learn more about the religion behind the dramatic events witnessed during the evening’s entertainment. That they are successful with many non-LDS pageant-goers is evident in the anti-Mormon’s presence and attempts at dissuasion. Pageants are a site of contested meaning not only between rival interpretations of the Mormon historical events portrayed in the pageants but in the meaning of pageant experience itself which becomes all at once for different attendees an opportunity to share religious ^[216] experiences, a pleasant evening with friends and family, and a contest arena for saving souls.

As a more secularized folk manifestation of local, cultural, and regional identity open to syncretism with other cultural and religious influences (Baptists even have floats in some Pioneer Day parades) Pioneer Day celebrations do not present as clear of a target for religious opposition as pageants do.

Patterns of Pioneer Day distribution and performance signify several facts about the nature of identity in the American West. As a living cultural practice, Pioneer Day indicates an on-going Mormon regional consciousness. In fact, through their yearly cycle of reverencing, remembering, and recapitulating past events, civic Pioneer Day celebrations help ensure that a religious regional sense of being stays manifest among the communities in which they occur.

However, the absence of Pioneer Day does not automatically mean that a community is less markedly Mormon. Independence Day and historical pageants occupy the community energies available for large public events in many Mormon towns. Friendly arrangements not to intrude on others’ celebratory attempts foster a dividing of potential Summer celebrations among neighboring towns.

Neither does the presence of a Pioneer Day necessarily betoken a community’s stronger sense of Mormon identity. Pioneer Day has proven adaptable as a community celebration to the diverse needs of various locales within the Mormon Culture Region. In Manassa, it recognizes the San Luis Valley’s dual participation in two unique cultural regions. In Kanosh, it proved so ^[217] adaptable as to not even be called Pioneer Day anymore—raising the question if in this case the July 24th Holiday has evolved into an entirely different creature.

Civic Pioneer Days’ form and presence is not determined “top down” to service the needs of church, state, or federal policies. Mormon Country’s pageants, parades, and other Pioneer Day events do not represent a monolithic hegemony, but they invite pluralism when it presents itself, and they are culturally responsive and adaptive to the demands of the market of cultural capital.

The officially Church-sponsored Manti and Arizona Temple pageants illustrate the limits of this pluralism in Mormon public events. In the multi-vocality of LDS-related public events in the West, only overtly hostile attacks on Latter-day Saint religion and culture are excluded by celebration organizers. Even so, in some notable events, anti-Mormons constitute an alternate sideshow that is part of the complex public spectacle of Mormon cultural pageantry. Meshing and intermingling the ethnic and religious minorities in their midst during their public celebrations, Mormonism serves as a main ingredient of the popular historical expression and civil religion of the North American West. ^[218]