6 Golden Years, 1890–1893

Assimilation

Manifesto

When Francis Hammond returned to Bluff in late October 1890 after his trips to Washington, D.C., Salt Lake City, and Huntsville, he had more to tell than tales of phonographs, skyscrapers, and the other wonders of the East. Bishop Nielson called on the stake president almost immediately to discuss what Hammond had heard in general conference a few weeks before. President Wilford Woodruff, under tremendous pressure from the federal government and in danger of losing even the temples of the Church, issued a manifesto discontinuing plural marriage. The document received a unanimous sustaining vote (though some Saints abstained) from those at the conference as a revelation from God. But now all those in plural marriages had to ratify the decision in their own minds, hearts, and homes.

Bishop Nielson and his wives had struggled to accept the principle over thirty years before and practicing it under pressure had increased their conviction. Now they had to let it go and doing so was one of the greatest trials of Jens’s faith in Church ^[253] leadership.¹ He was not going to disavow either of his wives, and the Manifesto did not require it. But after decades of constructing a faithful fortress around the doctrine of plural marriage within himself, it was difficult to demolish it at a blow. It was a quiet, personal struggle. Sometime between when Jens first heard of the Manifesto and this meeting with President Hammond, he had made up his mind to again reconcile himself to obey priesthood authority even now that the doctrine was different. The “brethren are disposed to accept and endorse the action of our leader and the conference,” President Hammond recorded after that evening’s discussion on “the spirit of the times, and the action of the Church at our late conference.”²

Many felt they had no choice. Laws like the Edmunds-Tucker Act were constricting the political, financial, and even religious life out of the Church, which was nearly bankrupt by the confiscation of so much of its property. As President Woodruff said, this was the only course open to secure the “temporal salvation” of the Church. In this light it worked. “A short time ago,” President Hammond later observed, “it seemed we would be crushed to atoms by the political power of the government. Today a great change has come over the nation and a time of peace seems to have set in.”³ Bluff had been fortunate in its draw of federal marshals during the raid, but now many men in town could rest easier knowing they would not have to head into the hills with every rumor. ^[254]

Some in Bluff were not entirely reconciled to the conditions set up by the Manifesto. The bishop still insisted on the importance and accuracy of the revelation to his congregation over a year later. Pap Redd, John Allan Jr., and a few of the other refugees who had lived in Bluff went to the Mormon colonies in Mexico in the early 1890s, after the Manifesto was issued. Down there they could live with both their wives instead of slighting one or more. Some, thoroughly converted to the necessity of plural marriage in order to receive the highest level of salvation, continued to contract multiple marriages south of the border in the years following the official declaration.

Partisan Politics

Even though the Manifesto brought greater peace with the Gentiles, it threatened greater disunion among the Saints. In the wake of the announcement, Church leaders wondered if it was not time to do away with the old party system and embrace the national parties. It could only help the territory’s chances for statehood if they did away with the People’s Party, which would most likely force the Liberal Party into extinction as well.⁴ When he received a feeler on this issue from Franklin S. Richards on June 3, 1891, President Hammond was fully in favor of it, seeing it as a sign that “the old issues of hate are dying out.”⁵ In the afternoon meeting of church two weeks later, the main subject was politics. Platte Lyman, now in Bluff full-time, announced that two great parties were being organized. The Lord was teaching them political science, he felt. ^[255] Francis Hammond quickly followed, proclaiming that the Saints must “act as a leaven in politics as well as in religion and so reform the world in all things.” Bishop Nielson bore his testimony to end the meeting, most likely endorsing what the other two had said.⁶ It was the most harmonious political meeting the town would have in some time. Before too long, Platte Lyman would be the head of Bluff Republicans, while Francis Hammond would champion the Democrats.

But the Democratic and Republican clubs springing up in counties around the state stayed out of San Juan for the time being. The main concern in Bluff was holding county government safe from the outside cowboys. So at a political meeting held at the bishop’s house on July 9, 1891, Church members felt it was not yet wise to divide into the two national parties, since Gentiles could exploit the division of so few voters and control the balance of power. Therefore, the Mormons agreed to support a “Citizens’” ticket for county officers, probably modeled after the transitional Citizens’ ticket in Salt Lake City, which fused Mormon and gentile candidates.⁷

Many who went to vote in early August were surprised to find an alternate slate under the old “People’s Party” name. The bishop’s son Joe ran for selectman in place of the Citizens’ candidate. Some placed the blame on Monticello, whose citizens, they felt, were trying to draw the county’s government into their orbit more than Bluff’s. Cowboys could not be far away from such intrigue either. It was a “farce election,” and the next Sunday Church leaders denounced these factions that turned brother against brother and ^[256] would “expose ourselves to our political enemies.”⁸

One thing almost everyone could agree on was that women should be allowed to vote again. Utah’s females voted from 1870 to 1887, before they were disfranchised by the Edmunds-Tucker Act. Two energetic women from the Relief Society in Salt Lake City, Sister Elizabeth Anderson Howard and Sister Mary Ann Freeze, toured Bluff in April 1892 to drum up support. They organized a Bluff suffrage association, with Adelia Lyman as president, Martha Hammond, Mary Jones, and Ann Bayles as vice presidents, Harriett Barton as secretary, and Calistia Hammond as treasurer. While Kirsten and Elsie Nielson did not hold office, they paid the fifty-cent fee to become members alongside their husband, who spoke after the Relief Society sisters in favor of the vote.⁹

Church authorities understood that joining the national political parties could be done only if substantial numbers of Mormons joined each party. If they did not, regardless of the names of the parties, they would fall back into the pro- and anti-Mormon axis of old. But more Mormons leaned toward the Democrats for a number of reasons. That party generally favored less federal government and more state control, a welcome plank to Utahns. Furthermore, the Democratic President Grover Cleveland had been more restrained in prosecuting polygamists, while the Republicans, since their start in the 1850s, were the party that wrote the antipolygamy laws and more energetically enforced them. It looked increasingly as if the Utah Democrats would turn into a People’s Party by another name. This suspicion was confirmed by the results of the 1891 election, which saw ^[257] twenty-four Democrats, twelve Liberals, and zero Republicans elected to the territorial legislature.

Many prominent Church leaders, such as Joseph F. Smith, Marion Lyman, and John Henry Smith, swiftly came out in support of the Republican Party and recruited new members. George Q. Cannon switched from Democrat to Republican. Other leaders resented this emphasis on the one party and countered strongly in favor of the Democrats. Moses Thatcher, an Apostle, gave a partisan speech reinforced by dogma: Jesus was a Democrat, he thundered, because he was for a diffusion of government, while Satan was Republican, since he stood for centralization of decision making. Republicans, especially Joseph F. and John Henry Smith countered almost as strongly.

Bluff stayed aloof from national parties in name only in 1892. The Citizens’ and People’s tickets were again on the ballot, but county citizens were quickly becoming Republicans and Democrats. Francis Hammond was chosen as the county’s representative to the territorial convention, and he struggled with the idea of parties in a unified Church. He returned from the convention in Provo in October and surprisingly urged San Juan Saints to vote for the Republican F. J. Cannon for Congress, instead of the Democrat J. L. Rawlins. Delegate Hammond had met privately with the counselors in the First Presidency of the Church, Joseph F. Smith and George Q. Cannon, who persuaded him that it would be better for the Church and the state if Cannon were elected and good relations with the national Republicans were cultivated. Not surprisingly, Cannon won eight of the twelve ballots cast in San Juan County, but lost in the overall election. “Quite a feeling is apparent in politics in our midst,” mourned President Hammond. He ^[258] hoped instead that the Lord would “overrule all for the good of his saints,” both in Bluff and in the whole territory.¹⁰

Ditch and Stock, 1890–1892

Ditch

The relaxation of outside political pressure in 1890 did not mean the San Juan River relented that year. The water rose, as it almost always did, to break the banks of the canal in the spring. “Men all at work repairing break in canal,” lamented President Hammond. “It has been much trouble this season so far—break, break, break.”¹¹ It did not get any easier. The next year the people were “almost discouraged” a number of times. They were swept with a mania for fruit trees in the spring, some planting almost three hundred seedlings and cuttings of peaches, plums, and grapes. But early in the season, the river took “a course to leave and [has] gone to [the opposite] bank.”¹² It took ten or so teams of animals and their owners almost a month to enlarge and prepare the ditch. Under the bishop’s direction, they located the headgate farther out than usual to capture the water, and the spring floods almost took it away. The few men in town flung themselves into fixing the perpetual breaks through May and June and tried to protect the headgate and the road nearby. Water dropped earlier than usual in July, but a lot of rain saved them from disaster late in the month. By the end of August the ditch committee quit. They turned the matter over to the bishop for ten days, to see if he could get the ^[259] water back in after the river sank below the head. His efforts salvaged a respectable fruit crop, though the town’s farmers lost most of the corn.¹³

The bishop became frustrated by the secularization of the county court. Since the improvements put in near the headgate also protected a county road, he felt the court should reimburse the irrigation laborers for part of their efforts. Road supervisor and county selectman Hans Bayles had collected almost $250 the year before for reinforcing the banks above town. But when the bishop put in for $50, the motion was denied. At the end of 1891, Bishop Nielson and eighteen others requested $150 for their labors but were again rejected. To be reimbursed, it appeared the job had to be done through the county road supervisor rather than through the ward’s bishop.¹⁴

The next year, Cottonwood Wash flooded in February, threatening to carry a few homesteads downriver. The bishop, Joe, and a number of other farmers brought their teams to rescue these fields, yards, and homes. They “riprapped” the banks, something they had done with increasing frequency on the San Juan. This meant they piled brush and stones on the slope to prevent erosion. They got a good deal done before many of the men had to go find their cattle on the range. But the practice they got working on the Cottonwood served them well, since the San Juan came back to its northern bank with a vengeance, threatening to carry more Bluff soil with it. Going out on the range grew more enticing as the year went on, because it meant not having to hew the ditch. It also ^[260] meant stockmen might be able to cash in on the ten-dollar bounty offered by the county court for any cougars they bagged, rising with the increased threat from three dollars the year before.¹⁵ But after the usual superhuman efforts of the few who remained, the water stayed in almost all summer. By late August, President Hammond recorded almost incredulously, “Water is still in the ditch; we have been blest in this beyond any season the people have been here.”¹⁶ More blessings came as well.

Stock

The wealth of those living in Bluff rose dramatically in the early 1890s. Some of it was connected to their efforts on the ditch. The molasses wrested from sorghum cane in John Allan’s mill brought in a good price in Colorado, as did some of their fruit. But mostly it was the caravans of wool-laden wagons and the herds of cattle and sheep that rolled and trotted into Colorado that brought such rich returns. The Nielson boys each did some of everything, but each also had his specialty: France ran the cattle, Joe minded the sheep, while Jens Peter was the farmer.¹⁷

The San Juan Co-op still managed the sheep herd, and the Bluff Cattle Pool continued to hold together from year to year.¹⁸ The two enterprises complemented each other well. In 1890, for example, when it was difficult to sell beef, sheep sold nicely.^{19 [261]} Jens, Joe, and increasingly France played important parts in the pool, though Fletch Hammond, Lemuel Redd, and Hans Bayles were usually the directors during these years. There was some temporary trouble with the Carlisles when the British brothers fenced across the new county road north of Monticello, but accommodations were quickly made by both sides to resolve the conflict.²⁰ Besides that, outright disputes with the Carlisles had dwindled as fights over water rights moved to the courts, and Mrs. Carlisle even attended a quarterly stake conference in Monticello in 1890. She also had girls from the town out to the company’s double-cabin headquarters for days at a time and would teach them crocheting and other types of needlework.²¹ But the Texas herds still ran around Rincon, and the LC Company still occupied lands to the east of Bluff.

Since at least 1890, Bluff’s stockmen contemplated buying out the Texas herd, owned by two men named Crosby and Gallagher. Doing so would rid them not only of the intrusive longhorns stripping so much of their winter grass, but also eliminate the unruly cowboys the outfit tended to employ. But it was too big for them until late in 1892, and even then they almost could not do it. Finally, though, they bought the two thousand head and fifty horses of the Elk Mountain Cattle Company, as the Texas outfit was officially called, for twenty thousand dollars. It was a huge commitment, since they would pay five thousand down and four thousand for each of the next four years, at 8 percent interest. It also meant they would have to mortgage the cattle they already owned, which made some ^[262] flinch. But at less than ten dollars per head, even if they were inferior longhorns that they would try to sell off as soon as possible, it was hard to pass up. Add to this the fact that Bluff’s stockmen would have much tighter control over their range, and the purchase was irresistible. By early 1892 they concluded the deal, and the bishop and his sons bought at least an eighth of the company, which was reorganized under the same Elk Mountain name and was managed separately from the Bluff Cattle Pool.²² Bluff cattlemen also bought a partial interest in the LC Company.²³ By 1892, they were the preeminent cattle interest in the south end of the county. Their sons could work for their own cattle outfits instead of hiring out to gentile companies. Herding cattle still was not any easier, and there was not much rain at the end of 1892, but these animals were starting to make a lot of money for many of the people in Bluff.

Unraveling

As fortunes swelled in Bluff, so did individual aspirations. The San Juan Co-op grew as much as the cattle herds did. The company continued to pay 40 percent dividends every December from 1889 to 1892.²⁴ Livestock thrived in a booming national market, and wool prices rose under the high protective duties of the McKinley Tariff, passed by the Republican “Billion Dollar Congress” in 1890. The sheep generated most of the profits, and the store did well, too. Various people clerked in the store, but Kumen ^[263] and Mary Jones often had a hand in it.

In March of 1891, however, the venture caused a significant rift in town. Kumen Jones felt the prices were too high. If this was true, then at least some of the windfall dividends paid to shareholders came from gouged consumers. Since most Bluff residents, like Brother Jones, were both shareholders and consumers, they felt both the loss and the profit.²⁵ Still, some resented the capitalist organization of the co-op, through which, they felt, “the big fish in the store are eating the little ones and the board who runs it are cheating the people.”²⁶ Furthermore, as one of the settlers who worked closely with the Indians, Jones resented the fact that some of Bluff’s good fortune was extracted from the Navajos and Utes, who held no shares in the co-op. So he intended to open his own store, which, by underselling the cooperative store, would bring in financial and moral profits. Hyrum Perkins and Phil Sorenson agreed with him. James Decker, another director of the co-op, announced he was preparing to open a store as well.²⁷

Bishop Nielson and President Hammond quickly countered this plan in the strongest terms. As a practical matter, the town should stay united in trading with the Indians. They urged Brother Jones to remember what had happened to Amasa Barton when he separated himself from the group. But spiritually, they must be united. “I claim it will divide the people and cause strife if we divide up the store,” the bishop reproved. ^[264] “A division of the sheep will come next and a division in every thing.”²⁸ President Hammond then reinforced these traditional community values: “We have two natures, spiritual and temporal, and as yet I have not found anyone wise enough to separate them. Some of us claim the bishop has no right to interfere with our private temporal affairs, but as Latter-day Saints we cannot afford this.”²⁹ Furthermore, the store, as a main point of contact with the Indians, was a “question of vital importance.” It had to help “create an influence with them looking to their welfare and preparing them to receive the Gospel.” But that was exactly what Brother Jones felt the store was not doing. The bishop’s spiritual advice was not strengthened by his position as the co-op’s second largest stockholder, though in his mind this was a result of his support for the cooperative principle as much as it was an investment.³⁰

Kumen Jones relented in part. He agreed to follow the counsel of the bishop, but he maintained that he was right on the issue. A moving testimony meeting on Sunday, March 22, also helped. Many testified that they were willing to follow the counsel of their priesthood leaders. Just after the meeting, Bishop Nielson, President Hammond, and Lemuel Redd worked on Kumen Jones some more. His depth of feeling was great on this issue. President Hammond found this “a great surprise to me as I have looked upon him as one of the best men in the ward and a full-hearted, counsel-supporting and abiding ^[265] man.” The leaders opened up again in the afternoon meeting. Bishop Nielson gave “an earnest appeal to the saints for union in our temporal as well as spiritual matters.” He recited the history of Bluff, reminding them of their struggles and how the Lord had blessed them in temporal matters through the principle of cooperation. He exhorted them to see the folly of multiplying stores in dealing with the Indians. They must continue to cooperate. President Hammond followed for an hour endorsing what the bishop said. They were not like the rest of the world, but rather “our situation and condition is very peculiar.” The safety of themselves, their wives and children depended largely on this policy. They should correct the evils of the co-op or turn the business over entirely to others. Those who wanted to start stores should go into some other industry, such as fruit canning. The issue was finally resolved in the reverberations of this unequivocal counsel. Brother Decker agreed to try his hand at canning. Kumen Jones, if not entirely satisfied, at least did not open his own store.³¹

After such effort to restore unity on such an important issue, the bishop was disappointed to see his own son tear it open again. Joe Nielson had long been interested in trade. He and William Hyde had operated a trading post above Montezuma by at least 1886, and in 1888 Joe had leased the store outright from Hyde.³² In 1890, he had gone in with Willard and Parley Butt on a store in Verdure. In January 1892, Joe had decided that he should open his own store in Bluff. He might have operated on the same principles as his brother-in-law Kumen did the year before. He might have been tired of riding the range ^[266] or roaming among his many other ventures in the region and felt this would let him live a more sedentary life. Whatever his reasoning, his father was opposed and said so publicly in church soon after. He and President Hammond recited their counsel from the previous year with little effect. Joe’s action reopened the town’s strong emotions on the subject as “some considerable feelings [were] manifest concerning the matter.” Jens was especially direct in insisting on obedience to religious leaders even in economic matters: “I have broken up my home six times because I have been counseled to,” he reminded his oldest son and any others who were of the same mind. “If we think we are right in our undertakings and the priesthood is wrong, it is safer to wait awhile and take counsel on these matters before taking steps.”³³ But by April, just as the co-op opened a branch store at Rincon now that the Texas cattle outfit was gone, Joe opened his store in Bluff. Not long after, though, he relented, due to either failure or contrition. In July, the co-op bought out the renegade store’s stock, and union, at least in appearance, was restored. Unlimited individualism, the strongest threat to their spiritual foundation, was rebuked, but its causes were not entirely denied. The co-op store experienced some cash shortages soon after, as it started paying higher prices to the Indians for their sheep and probably for their other commodities as well.^{34 [267]}

Youth

Growing Up in Bluff

“Our greatest hope is with our children,” Bishop Nielson once reminded his ward members.³⁵ In many ways, Bluff was a fun place for children to grow up, and each year had a regular rhythm. Holiday festivities usually trickled into the first week of the New Year as the younger residents continued to dance, race on foot or on horseback, and play baseball, sometimes for fun, sometimes for a candy pulling, and sometimes for a canned oyster supper. After the holidays, it was back to school, where they learned “reading, writing, spelling, arithmetic, grammar, history, hygiene, etc.”³⁶ On Valentine’s Day, the older schoolboys developed a custom of throwing little valentines inside President Hammond’s outer door, then knocking and running. They usually got to celebrate Washington’s birthday soon after with the usual programs, recitations, and songs. One boy one year proclaimed with pride that in a parade of marching states, “I was Texas.”³⁷

Dainty pink and blue cliff flowers bloomed and gave off their first fragrance in late February or early March, and the blossoms of the apricot and peach trees followed soon after in town.³⁸ This was the sign that it was time to plan picnics. The children might go out to Sand Island on the Cottonwood or follow Primary President Jody Wood barefoot up Cow Canyon.³⁹ There they played games and climbed the cliffs up to the ^[268] caves, one of which, with a particularly good echo, was known as Primary Cave. The young men and women dubbed another aperture “Dance Hall Cave.”⁴⁰ Throughout the year, daring spelunkers and climbers plumbed the caves and scaled the cliffs north of town, “in wild hazard of harm, but having a big time.”⁴¹ The bishop now owned the field south of town, which was the home of another popular attraction. Townspeople often traipsed down the “fenced-in lane, bordered by poplar trees, wild rose bushes, wild plum trees and strawberry bushes” toward the river and the “Old Swing Tree.” Groups assembled under its enormous boughs for picnics and socials, couples came to hold “dual conferences,” and individuals stopped to think as they sat next to its trunk or on the swing suspended from its lofty branches.⁴²

As the weather continued to warm, many looked forward to traveling longer distances to a quarterly conference or riding along with a freighting trip to Durango. There they could stay in a hotel, shop somewhere that was not the San Juan Co-op, and maybe even have their pictures taken.⁴³ Whenever conference was held in Bluff, it meant a lot of dinners and parties and a lot of out-of-town guests. But first it meant a lot of work. Houses were scoured, bedding aired, yards mended and tidied. Bathed, scrubbed, and combed children scurried up the bluffs to watch for the arrival of visiting authorities, ^[269] especially Bishop Burnham with his wagon full of apples.⁴⁴ Whether their family was putting up Saints from other wards in the stake or Church dignitaries from farther away, it often meant the children were turned out of their beds to sleep outside, sometimes on haystacks. Girls, according to Jennie Wood, were “hung on nails” to make room for the visitors.⁴⁵ A favorite trip to take, especially with conference guests, was to the “Big Cave” five miles up the San Juan River from Bluff. The cavern was three hundred feet high and about the same expanse from side to side and from front to back. There were sixteen rooms of ruins in the back, and President Hammond thought they were built by the Gadianton robbers, infamous marauders described in the Book of Mormon.⁴⁶

Bluff residents of all ages could not help but notice the great quantity of ruins and relics around them, which at times gave them a forlorn sense that they were only a recent, small band compared with the former residents of the land. It was hard to go far in their travels on the range without encountering some artifact of past occupants of the country. Jens Peter Nielson and Charles Lang, a recently arrived, multi-talented young man from Pittsburgh, took particular interest in these relics, exploring Grand Gulch sometime before 1890. They also helped guide the McLoyd expedition from Durango in 1890 and 1891. Platte Lyman and Samuel Wood showed an interest in the artifacts as well, sometimes taking along Hans Bayles and the Perkins brothers. None of them knew much ^[270] about the relics or how to excavate them, usually labeling them all Aztec ruins. But they uncovered a lot of interesting items. Lyman found a mummy in Allan Canyon, wrapped in a fabric and feather blanket. For a time, the withered corpse was stored in his cellar and dubbed the “King of Blue Mountain” by those children who dared to peek in at him.⁴⁷

Late spring and summer brought a steady succession of celebrations. Founder’s Day, the bishop’s birthday, the Fourth of July, and Pioneer Day were festive occasions, often with a children’s dance in the afternoon. The kids could have “a rowdy time” complete with “candy and apples.”⁴⁸ They might even be lucky enough to get ice cream on Independence Day, if there was still snow in the Blues and someone was willing to go get it.⁴⁹

Summer meant more excursions. Sometimes groups of youth traveled to the cattle camps on Elk Mountain for a few days. The Nielson children spent some summers up at the family dairy at Dodge Point with Uncle Willard and Aunt Julia Butt, helping with the chores but having “a glorious time.”⁵⁰ They even got to keep their share of the profits. Throughout the year every young man and woman in Bluff had to tend and herd the livestock around the house and in the hills surrounding the town. Learning to ride was as much taken for granted as learning to crawl and walk. Their horses, mules, and ^[271] milk cows became to them like so many more ornery or amenable relatives, whose characters became well known through long experience together.

The fruit came in late summer. First the raspberries ripened, followed by apricots, plums, peaches, grapes, melons, and apples.⁵¹ “I am gorged on watermelon half the time,” commented young Albert R. Lyman approvingly.⁵² Often these melons were consumed at parties for that purpose, and with any luck these occasions would wind up with a rind fight.⁵³ Scaffolds to dry peaches went up and were heavily laden in September and October. “We dried peaches as if our lives depended on it,” which left “the whole place stinking with them.”⁵⁴ The smell of molasses also wafted through town as the youth helped with the difficult process of transforming sorghum cane into something sweeter in John Allan’s mill.⁵⁵ The scent was not entirely pleasant for the older children, since it was the result of a lot of hard work stripping cane. To the younger ones, though, it was the signal that there was a big pile of springy and slippery “pummy” stalks from the sorghum cane to play on.⁵⁶

By November the children were back in school. They could go through only the eighth grade in Bluff, but Mancos had a good secondary school. Some of Bluff’s children were starting to be packed off to the Brigham Young Academy in Provo for secondary ^[272] education. But they had other educational opportunities as well. The bishop, impressed by his daughters Caroline and Cindy’s singing performance at the conjoint youth meeting the week before, reminded Bluff’s children of how fortunate they were. He spoke in Sunday School in early 1891 of “the difference between the manner of raising and training children when he was young in Denmark, and the way our children are supplied with advantages for culture.”⁵⁷ Children and youth were encouraged to read, memorize, recite, sing, and act in their Church groups and schools. They played what instruments they could (some boys even started a harmonica band), but skilled training was scarce. David Edwards, the brother of one of the Hole-in-the-Rock pioneers, arrived sometime in the early 1890s and started teaching music lessons in town. Sometimes the Bluff Ward Choir would serenade families in the evening. Jens managed to send for two organs, one for each of his homes, by mail order, and the young people in town would often gather around one or the other to sing.⁵⁸

Finally, the big celebrations arrived around Christmas and New Year, which would start the whole cycle over again. Throughout it all Indians came to town and were a perpetual source of wonder and the willies, fights, and friends for the young. Between the regular festivities, the assorted animals, the mysterious landscape, and the exotic neighbors, Bluff’s children had plenty that could break the routine of their studies and chores.

Jens’s younger children enjoyed all this growing up in Bluff, and most of them had ^[273] graduated from childhood in these surroundings. Cindy was eighteen, and Caroline, Kirsten’s youngest child, turned sixteen in 1890. Katrine’s three survivors, Annetta, Uriah, and Freeman, were fifteen, thirteen, and eleven. Annetta, or “Nettie,” was shorter and quieter than the average Nielson child. She did not socialize as much as most Bluff youth but had a solemn reservoir of faith.⁵⁹ Uriah and Freeman were more rambunctious, and sometimes these boys may have wondered if they were lucky to have their father around so much, since he did not neglect discipline. After Jens spanked Uriah a few years before, the father looked down at the angry boy and announced, “Now what do you tink, I know what you tink, you tink, ‘Damn you old Dad,’ now I’ll spank you for that.”⁶⁰ Freeman was also an energetic lad, “an entertainer, he was magnetic; he was a chief among the boys.”⁶¹

Troubles Right Here

“We should take more interest in our young,” Bishop Nielson announced from the pulpit in late 1890. “There is a great labor to perform in this respect.”⁶² On another occasion he warned his ward, “We will be to blame if our children do not grow up in the path of right as we have few bad influences to contend with in this land.”⁶³ But there were enough contrary influences and instincts in Bluff to make raising so many children ^[274] and young adults difficult, not just for the parents, but for the whole town. Some of the youth had turned the pleasures of childhood into vices. They started betting more than canned oysters on ball games and horse races. One race put several hundred dollars at stake before it was called off by alarmed authorities. Parties became too frequent. “Two social parties this evening, one in the school house and one at a private house,” mourned President Hammond at the end of an extended holiday season. “This spirit of frivolity among the young is running wild, and the Lord is not pleased with it.”⁶⁴

There were other examples of taking their fun too far. The bishop scolded the deacons at their weekly meeting for their “rude behavior at the singing school last Tuesday evening.”⁶⁵ Soon after that the parents were reminded in church that since Bluff had the blessing of being free from saloons, their children should be better for it, but there were fears they were not. Dancing, within its proper bounds, uplifted the spirits of the town and helped keep the youth content.⁶⁶ But outside these limits it became a menace. The leaders exhorted the ward “to put a check upon these everlasting dances, and turn the hearts of the young into a more elevating channel.”⁶⁷ The youth were urged to spend more time seeking a knowledge of the gospel in prayer and in the scriptures. The young men were given more responsibilities in the ward. Bishop Nielson, perhaps mindful of his episode with Uriah, instructed the ward, “We should exercise kindness towards them ^[275] and not drive them from us by harsh treatment.”⁶⁸

In some ways the Bluff Saints were paying the price for their frontier existence and for turning from agriculture to livestock. Young boys were often left in town without their fathers, who were out on the range or freighting co-op merchandise to Colorado. Older boys were out on the range themselves, sometimes with and sometimes without their fathers, far from regular families and church meetings. These older boys were turning into “the rough character” of the cowboy. The boys in town not only picked up coarse manners from older boys, but also some of their habits. The bishop and other leaders increasingly reproved the young men for drinking whiskey. On the Fourth of July in 1891, a number of Bluff boys celebrated too much and shot up the co-op store, and on the fifth the sobered young men were reprimanded by their bishop and stake president in church.⁶⁹

The outside cowboys continued to hang around, “a low-lived set generally, [with] a few exceptions.”⁷⁰ Bluff had fewer of them in town than Moab or Monticello, but the rough outsiders still showed up at dances. “They always manage[d] to find out when our parties are held.”⁷¹ A group tried to crash a dance late in June 1891. The bishop refused to let them in; they took offense and rode through town firing their guns. The Bluff girls were to blame, not just for attracting the cowboys, but for poor judgment. Regarding the cowboys, Martha Hammond wrote her husband that “most of our girls seem to think as ^[276] much of them as they would of a boy of good standing in the church.”⁷² President Hammond agreed that “our girls are much too fresh in company with the outside element.”⁷³ But Bluff’s young men also put off marriage until a later age, leaving some of the young women to look elsewhere. Many of these problems came together to mar Bluff’s Pioneer Day celebration on July 24, 1891. Some cowboys came to the dance along with some liquor, and once again the night was brought to a conclusion by the sound of gunfire racing through the streets.⁷⁴

The worried Bluff parents soon found out, however, how fortunate they were. At nine o’clock the next morning, Willard Butt arrived in town after riding all night. He brought grim news: Jane Walton was dead. She had been the president of the San Juan Stake Relief Society for almost as long as it had existed and had been esteemed as “a very kindly disposed woman, full of charity and sympathy, abounding in deeds of practical piety.”⁷⁵ She had just been in Bluff two weeks earlier at a Relief Society conference, where she advised the young women to learn useful crafts so they could support themselves. This would give them the independence to “refuse marriage to the unworthy.”⁷⁶ Now, as Butt told his stunned listeners, she had been shot accidentally by an inebriated Mormon boy confronting a drunken cowboy. ^[277]

Immediately Bluff mobilized. The bishop and most of the older settlers, who knew the Waltons well from their eight years in Bluff, formed a wagon train that set out for Monticello soon after noon. When darkness came, the procession was still two miles away from Mustang Spring, but some of the men went ahead with torches to pick out the road. Rain started falling. Bishop Nielson’s wagon slid off a muddy grade and tipped over. Luckily, no one was hurt, the wagon was righted, and the column slogged on. After camping for a few hours, they were on the road as soon as light broke, arriving at Monticello by eight o’clock in the morning.⁷⁷

There they found a “dense cloud of gloom on the whole ward.” The Waltons were in “great grief,” their two daughters, Magnolia and Leona, were “almost inconsolable.” The citizens also found out the details of the tragedy, which had been caused by troubles all too familiar to them. Someone in Monticello had sold whiskey to cowboys and Mormon boys before the Pioneer Day dance.⁷⁸ Tom Roach, a Carlisle cowboy who lived across the street from the Waltons, was well-liked when sober but dangerous when drunk. He had killed an Indian in a squabble a few years before, and he had appeared late at the Pioneer Day dance in a similarly soused state, upset with the Mormons for the trouble he thought they had been causing between him and his Mormon wife.⁷⁹

The fatal chain of events commenced close to midnight when Roach insisted on ^[278] dancing out of turn and tried to shove Nephi Bailey off the dance floor. Frank Hyde intervened, and Roach gashed him in the back with a knife. Hyde and some others grabbed Roach, and they were about to tie him up when a friend said he would look after the troublemaker. But Roach got a gun and started threatening the whole house. Bill McCord, another cowboy friend, tried to coax the gun away, but Roach shot him dead. Then he threatened to kill anyone who left the building. Frank Adams, a nineteen-year-old Mormon who had also had too much whiskey that night, escaped through a window. He ran to the Waltons’ nearby home and grabbed Charles Walton’s rifle. By the time he returned, the ruckus had moved outside the meetinghouse. The drunken Mormon called on the menacing cowboy to lay down his weapon. A gun thundered, and Jane Walton fell dead, shot “just under the arms killing her instantly.”⁸⁰ Roach’s wife cried out and flung herself over the body of the fallen woman. Roach seemed to believe that he had killed Sister Walton and became distraught. He collected money from his captives so he could get away then contritely returned it and let everyone go. He found a horse, left town, and had not been seen since.

The funeral was held at two o’clock in the afternoon the day the Bluff Saints arrived. Just as the party made ready to leave the Waltons’ home and proceed to the church, a shroud of rain and hail, heavier than many had ever seen before, dropped three ^[279] inches of water on the ground in half an hour. The six young pallbearers waded through the muck and brought the casket to the church. Jens Nielson and the other leaders did their best to assure the congregation, “Saints do not mourn without hope as do the wicked.” Then those at the funeral loaded into wagons and carriages, drove to the cemetery east of town, and made Jane Walton its first occupant, “laid away until the resurrection day.”⁸¹

Sister Walton’s death was tragic by any measure, but more so because it would not have happened if the members of the San Juan Stake had listened to their leaders. If only Mormon boys had not imitated and associated with cowboys so much, and Mormon girls had not invited them to their dances through words or demeanor, this could have been averted. President Hammond trusted it would teach this one lesson: “That those who are not for us are against us.”⁸² The mission to control San Juan County was not just on the borders against outsiders but within their own wards and homes.

Church leaders stepped up the fight. After the stake conference in August, the high council voted to ban cowboys from social gatherings and disfellowship any Church members who either sold alcohol or drank it and disturbed the peace. Those in the stake were especially vigilant for the rest of the year. Many of the younger men in Bluff, including Joe, Jens Peter, and France Nielson, were confronted with their drinking and asked forgiveness from the assembled ward members.⁸³ Problems with the youth did not ^[280] end with this episode. Young men continued to misbehave in church, drink occasionally, and persist in round dancing. Church leaders even had to ferret out the young men who stole apples from Bishop Burnham’s wagon after a stake conference, then ferret out feelings of contrition from them. But authorities continued to preach to them and enforce regulations on dances in the wake of the disaster. The stake conference in February 1892 concluded with a “priesthood dance,” in which all the Saints were on their best behavior. “We enjoyed ourselves much, the Spirit of the Lord was present, no whiskey, no misconduct.” To the leaders, at least, it was “the best party ever had in this stake.”⁸⁴ They continued, amid their rising fortunes, the fight without and within: to save the county, their children, and themselves from the influences of the Gentiles. Meanwhile, the six hundred dollar reward for Tom Roach remained unclaimed.

The Peak, 1893

One of the parties of the 1892 Christmas season was a dinner thrown by Jens Nielson in honor of his son’s wedding. France had grown swiftly from the quiet boy who had helped herd cattle on the trek to Bluff to a six-foot-two-inch, sandy-haired, twenty-four-year-old bridegroom. He was a major part of the Nielsons’ financial ventures, spending time on the range, at the dairy, and in Verdure, and he was stepping up in his religious duties as well, having just been made a counselor in the ward’s young men’s organization. He had married Leona Jane, or “Lone,” Walton, the younger daughter of the departed Relief Society president, a month before in the Logan Temple. Now, nearly ^[281] the whole ward came by to offer their congratulations and have a good time. Nearly the whole ward, in fact, would have a good time, not just that night but for the next six months, as the fortunes of Bluff continued to rise to the highest point they had yet reached. To start, they found themselves in the middle of a gold rush.

Boom

Various and scattered groups had tried to extract precious ore from San Juan County before 1892, but their efforts had always been ultimately unsuccessful. When reports came out of Monticello that prospectors found gold and silver in the Blue Mountains, most in Bluff assumed it would be over quickly. They were surprised to learn that more miners were coming in September 1892, and by early December some had discovered gold on the San Juan River, eighty miles west of Bluff. As Christmas approached, the Deseret News proclaimed the “New Gold Fields” and announced the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad had discounted rates from Salt Lake City to Thompson’s Springs.⁸⁵ Bishop Nielson took time on the day of France’s reception to huddle with other Church leaders about how to handle the traffic to the mines. Two days before the New Year, Bluff was being transformed: “A constant stream of people are daily passing through our little town, nearly every house is being turned into boarding houses, and our people are being excited over the changed conditions.”⁸⁶ Reports from the fields fed the rush, claiming large nuggets were being found and that Utah would be bigger than the Black Hills and ^[282] “scaling up close to early California” in gold production.⁸⁷

The ward tried to meet the influx together. On New Year’s Eve, the leaders gathered at one of Jens Nielson’s homes and agreed to encourage a stagecoach company by building stables next to the tithing lot. They also concluded that the co-op ought to build a hotel near the store to accommodate and capitalize on all the visitors.

But this opportunity was also an invasion, and Church leaders tried to strengthen their ward members against dangerous influences. Francis Hammond told about his sobering experiences in the California gold fields years before and recalled how Brigham Young had stated that “we are not a mining people.” Bishop Nielson reminded his flock that the principles of the gospel were better than gold and silver, and he encouraged the ward teachers to visit the homes of the Saints more frequently than usual.⁸⁸ Forewarned by their experiences with the cowboys, the biggest concern was about the youth: the girls should treat the miners “courteously, and let them pass on.” The young ladies should, under no circumstances, paint their faces, “as some had done lately.” Mothers should “set a double watch over children.”⁸⁹

The rush continued to swell. By January 4, one reporter guessed some seven hundred miners had started their diggings just below Bluff and worked the fields 250 miles down the San Juan and up the Colorado River. While that estimate was probably too high, the streets of Bluff were crowded with wagons, pack animals, and their owners. ^[283] More arrived daily on the stage set up from Dolores, Colorado, to Bluff, which deposited its first passengers in town on January 2, and the New York Sun even sent an expedition. The residents in Bluff were already starting to mine the miners by feeding and lodging them and their animals. Signs popped up all over the town, advertising such services as hotels, “meals at short notice,” laundry, and “bread for sale.”⁹⁰ The co-op ordered thirty thousand board feet of lumber to build their hotel. From the demands of the town and the miners, Willard Butt’s sawmill at Verdure did outstanding business. France Nielson and Wayne Redd went down to the gold fields to check into the wisdom of opening a meat market for the miners. Fast meeting on Thursday, January 5, was devoted to the town’s guests. The Saints were counseled to act as such and treat the visitors fairly, without charging exorbitant prices or losing sight of their duties in their haste to get rich. Instead, the miners should leave impressed with their honesty. The meetinghouse was packed full for Sunday meetings, with over fifty strangers present.⁹¹

The initial bubble burst by the second week in January. France returned discouraged about supplying meat to the miners. J. Clayton Nichols, a geologist and banker from Grand Junction, brought back negative reports about the quality of gold in the fields. It was too fine and therefore too expensive for individual miners to retrieve.⁹² But all sorts of people kept arriving, “bankers, mechanics, farmers, merchants, black-legs, ^[284] and tramps, [and] one or two preachers.”⁹³ Most of them did not go on to the gold fields, however, once they heard the latest reports. Some went up to Monticello, but many tried to sell their equipment and get out altogether. Honest and gouged profits kept coming to those in Bluff, as did a lot of merchandise sold cheaply by disillusioned miners. Some of the town’s old residents may have remembered all the effort the early Bluff settlers had expended in exporting their labor to Colorado. Now Coloradans and other outsiders were conveniently coming here to deposit their wealth.

But the fortunes for Bluff were not unalloyed. John Morton Wood, the fourteen-year-old son of Samuel and Jody Wood fell and bruised his knee while playing baseball on New Year’s Day. For the next three weeks, all through the big days of the rush, he lay in bed in great pain, at times unable to eat. On January 18, as the number of miners waned, he died. Perhaps it was blood poisoning or some other type of infection, but this was a particularly strange and sad funeral for Bluff. Uriah and Freeman Nielson helped the other boys carry their fellow deacon’s casket into the log meetinghouse.⁹⁴ Jens Nielson, Platte Lyman, and Francis Hammond tried to console the living with the hopes of the resurrection before they lowered the coffin into the hill. John’s mother had promised the boy a birthday party that year. On June 5, even though John was no longer there, she had one anyway, inviting his friends over for more of a commemoration than a celebration. At the occasion she handed out black-edged cards reading, “Absent but not ^[285] forgotten: John M. Wood.”⁹⁵

Hopeful miners continued to drift in throughout the year, but the boom was over by February. The gold on the San Juan was mostly “flour gold,” of such small particles that it was almost impossible to extract profitably without expensive machinery.⁹⁶ For a time, Bluff dealt with the backwash. Many of the miners were not only disappointed, but destitute. Some of them panhandled in Bluff, but others could do more than mine. Melvin Dempsey, for example, taught music lessons, and a number of the other miners had skills in masonry, stonework, and carpentry that would soon be useful in town.⁹⁷

Bluff’s hopes for itself died with the boom. The hotel was never built. The stage lines quickly quit operation. The Southern Rio Grande never went beyond inquiries in extending a line to Bluff. But if the boom did not fulfill the dreams of the town, it did not realize its nightmares either. In fact, compared with the cowboys, the miners were choirboys. There was one lethal fight among about forty miners down by the diggings but no violence near Bluff. Some worried about the influence of miners on certain Bluff boys, but on the whole the town’s youth behaved themselves.⁹⁸ Some boys drank a little whiskey on New Year’s Eve, some girls were too fresh in blatantly choosing miners as their dance partners, and there was one fracas between two of the miners at one of the ^[286] dances. But that was about it. Since the town could not prevent a saloon from opening, the co-op bought two loads of whiskey from those planning to do so and locked it all in the store.⁹⁹

Instead, the biggest worry was about their land. Since the government still had not conducted an official survey of their town, the residents had no legal claim to it. Fearing that the gold seekers might stake claims not just down the San Juan but also on their homes, lots, and fields, Bluff’s leaders organized a mining district comprising the whole town. It caused some inconveniences to meet the requirements of doing so, but it was the only way to secure their land, which had already cost them, “if labor be counted in, at least one hundred dollars per acre.”¹⁰⁰ On the whole, President Hammond’s wish from the height of the boom came true: “We hope the excitement will soon pass over and leave us.”¹⁰¹ Mining companies continued their attempts to extract significant amounts of the precious ore on the San Juan and in the Blue Mountains for the next decade. Despite names like the Gold Queen and Dream mines, they did not do well.

The main bounty the gold rush yielded to Bluff was in goodwill, just as the leaders had hoped. Although the townspeople did make significant profits and the ward teaching did not get done as frequently as the bishop had wanted, most miners left with a good impression. “Strangers generally seem surprised to find such good order prevailing in our ^[287] midst,” according to President Hammond, “and they have many words of praise for us, and acknowledge how their prejudice is removed by visiting us at our homes.”¹⁰² Bert Loper, who came later with a mining company, gave a strong example of such feelings:

During my sojourn in Bluff I lived with a Mormon family by the name of Kumen Jones—his wife was the daughter of the Mormon bishop. “Aunt Mary” was one of God’s own people, and during my time here on earth I have never met a finer woman. I believe she took just as good care of us “gentiles” as she did her own people. Her father was just the same kind, and I really believed that he died without an enemy—loved by all.¹⁰³

Far more miners showed an interest in Mormonism than the cowboys ever had. Up to sixty attended meetings on Sundays, and “without any exception they have behaved like gentlemen.”¹⁰⁴ President Hammond defended the Manifesto as more than a political expedient on a couple of occasions, especially to Dr. Bull, a visiting Episcopalian minister. Despite the visitor’s skepticism on this issue, he was given the pulpit on Christmas Day and returned the favor by saying “nothing but what all saints could endorse.”¹⁰⁵ After his remarks, Jens Nielson contrasted the contentions among other churches and their trials of logic to the plainly revealed truths of Mormonism. “Our souls have peace concerning all doctrines,” he concluded.¹⁰⁶ Five miners were baptized into the Church in 1893, and possibly a sixth in 1894. While the first convert, German professor and gold seeker Jacob Schuessler, left town soon after his confirmation into the Church, ^[288] Charles Sitzer, William Nix, and A. L. F. McDermott stayed and raised families in the county. The gold rush also attracted some Mormons who remained. David John Rogers had married one of Walter Stevens’s daughters in New Mexico but was attracted to Bluff by the boom. Ezekiel Johnson, son of Joel H. Johnson, an associate of Joseph Smith, had herded cattle and wandered aimlessly in geography and beliefs. He also came with the gold boom, but his bishop in Arizona introduced him to Jens Nielson on his recommend in this way:

To whom it may concern: This is to certify that when Brother Johnson came to this ward he had with him a good recommend, but while here he paid no tithing and tinkered with the gospel but very little. But he is of a good family and faithful parentage and would be a power for good in a ward if he would apply himself. Try him; he is all right.¹⁰⁷

Perhaps twelve hundred miners rushed through Bluff in late 1892 and early 1893, and these few were the sediment who stayed.

Dedication

If the gold rush meant the Saints in Bluff had one foot on earth in early 1893, they tried to place the other somewhere closer to heaven. They were preparing for something transcendent. When the ground was broken to start construction of a temple in Salt Lake City in 1853, the earth was frozen so hard that a pick had to be used in place of a shovel. It seemed the same pace continued throughout the construction. Between filling in the temple’s foundation when Johnston’s Army approached in 1857 and completely rebuilding it so it would be more solid starting in 1862, it took fourteen years ^[289] to get the structure to ground level. The enormous difficulties and expense of custom carving every stone for the structure occupied most of the next twenty-five years.

Jens and Kirsten Nielson attended general conference in Salt Lake City in April 1892. After the sessions, they joined perhaps fifty thousand others who thronged around the temple for the long-awaited capstone ceremony. They sang “The Capstone March,” then watched eagerly as President Wilford Woodruff pressed a button, which caused a current of electricity to operate the apparatus that lowered the top half of the round ball on the center east spire into place. Great cheers and shouts of “hosanna” erupted. The gold statue of the Angel Moroni, trumpeting the gospel to the world, was then placed on top of the ball. But the building was not complete. The interior of the temple still needed three more years of solid work to be finished. At the end of the capstone ceremony, however, Elder Francis Marion Lyman challenged Church members to have the temple completely ready for dedication in only one year.¹⁰⁸

The Saints in the San Juan Stake endeavored to do their part. They had already given over five hundred dollars to the cause in 1892 when they were assessed another six hundred dollars in November. By the end of February in 1893, they exceeded their quota and sent in over seven hundred dollars, with the Bluff Ward contributing more than four hundred of it. The last two hundred were donated in April, perhaps in an informal tithe of the gold rush bounty.¹⁰⁹ Church members also tried to get their ward and themselves in order before the great event. They made sure ^[290] their organizations were fully staffed and running smoothly. Individuals straightened out their lives so they would be worthy to have a recommend to attend the dedication ceremonies.¹¹⁰ They also endeavored to rid themselves of any hard feelings they had toward each other.¹¹¹ All who could go to the ceremonies were exhorted by their leaders to do so. About one hundred people from the San Juan Stake took the Denver and Rio Grande to Salt Lake in early April.¹¹² But Bishop Nielson stayed in Bluff. Perhaps the ward needed minding with so many strangers still in town. In any event, he did not see the dedicatory ceremonies the whole Church had so long awaited. He learned of the events as he did much of what was going on in the world outside his own experience—from the Deseret News and other papers as well as from those who were there.¹¹³

The reports the bishop received were as good as he had hoped. In the enthusiasm of the moment, Francis Hammond may not have felt he was exaggerating in the least when he proclaimed the dedication of the Salt Lake Temple “the greatest event ever transpired on the earth since the advent of Father Adam.” Most Saints felt heaven came close to earth during the week. Many from Bluff attended general conference sessions first and heard the Church authorities reflect on the miraculous progress on the temple, but also on how the Church had been divinely led through its trials to this time of peace. The temple was actually finished at noon on April 5. That afternoon, an open house was held for ^[291] about six hundred prominent Gentiles. Even C. C. Goodwin of the Salt Lake Tribune wrote a beautiful description of the striking structure.

The next day, April 6, Church leaders were given a tour of the temple, from the life-sized oxen in the baptistry to the “heavenly grandeur” of the celestial room. Then the first dedicatory session was held in the assembly hall in the temple, which could hold 2,250 people. The choir sang an anthem, then President Woodruff offered the dedicatory prayer. For forty minutes he recounted the history of the Church and of the temple and then dedicated the specific parts of the building. Lorenzo Snow then led the Hosanna Shout, and it seemed to some as if “the heavenly hosts had come down to mingle with us.” Through their tears of joy, the congregation sang “The Spirit of God” as the choir performed the “Hosanna Anthem.” Joseph F. Smith “sobbed and wept like a child before the assembled hosts of Israel” as he tried to speak. President Woodruff then proclaimed the temple and the people of the Church accepted of the Lord. Those who were disposed to look for signs found them in the gale that assaulted the temple during the ceremonies or the flock of about one hundred seagulls, not seen around Salt Lake City for years, hovering around the spires despite the gusts.¹¹⁴

It was a great time of rejoicing for the Saints. The temple, so long delayed and so recently surrendered into the hands of the government, was now completed and dedicated. The First Presidency sent around a circular letter, urging the members of the Church to keep the same spirit they had had at the time of the Salt Lake Temple dedication. They should begin by fasting, praying, repenting of their sins, and putting their own households in order. Then their ^[292] influence would spread throughout their wards and stakes. Bluff’s leaders encouraged the ward to follow this counsel.¹¹⁵

More Dedications

Bluff Ward members also had their own dedication to attend to. After the afternoon church meeting on May 14, 1893, they hiked out of the old log meetinghouse “a few rods west and north.” There, President Hammond laid the southeast cornerstone for a new stone church. The ward had thought about building such a structure for a long time but put off plans out of uncertainty over how long they could stay in the county. In 1892, however, Platte Lyman “alluded to our poor, old log house where we worship at Bluff” and expressed his desire for a place of worship dedicated solely for that purpose. A few months later, Brother Lyman, the bishop, and a few others were appointed as a committee to investigate the building of a new structure. The gold rush provided a number of skilled men who, in the absence of gold, contracted to do the work. President Hammond did not like the idea of Gentiles building their church, but his concern did not last long. John Lumpkin, the stonecutter and mason, as well as all three carpenters, Charles Sitzer, Alfred Johnson, and William Nix, were baptized by the end of the year. A stone quarry was started near Bluff, teams took turns hauling the rocks, and by mid-May they were ready to start. Bishop Nielson stood atop the cornerstone and offered the dedicatory prayer for the new meetinghouse.^{116 [293]}

In these flush times, the town also started building a sandstone schoolhouse. At 50' by 25', it was five feet narrower than the meetinghouse but could accommodate up to one hundred pupils. Together these buildings would cost over six thousand dollars, but that seemed easily possible in the bounties that were pouring in from the range, from the pockets of the miners, and seemingly from heaven. When the bishop reported his ward to the quarterly stake conference a week after the meetinghouse dedication, he had many reasons to be satisfied. The ward’s meetings were well attended and its members had paid full tithing and contributed more than their share for the Salt Lake Temple, plus they were building a solid church and schoolhouse as monuments to their determination to remain in the settlement. Jens had one more reason at that conference that made him swell with justifiable pride.¹¹⁷

Joe was going to be the first missionary from Bluff. He had been called with four other members of the stake the previous November but almost did not make it. During the gold rush, Joe again could not resist some sociable whiskey and gambling. But he confessed fully and was forgiven at the February stake conference. Now he spoke of his eagerness and expectations to work in the Northern States Mission. It would be difficult to leave Ida and his five children, the oldest of which was only seven, but there were plenty of family members on both the Nielson and Lyman sides to help in his absence. A collection was taken in the ward to help him on his way, and Joe departed before the end of May.^{118 [294]}

While on his mission, Joe might have been able to visit the spectacle of the century, the Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. If he did, with the other visitors he would have marveled at the magnificent neoclassical structures of the “Great White City” and been astonished at the technological wonders they housed. He might have even ridden the ferris wheel or eaten some cracker jack. If he did go, he was not the only representative from San Juan County.

In 1892, the First Presidency expressed its desire to send an exhibit of ancient Indian artifacts to the exposition. In December, the San Juan County Commission appropriated two hundred dollars to ship items to the fair. The next February, two officials coordinating Utah’s contributions to the fair arrived in Bluff. They decided to ship Charles McLoyd, who had collected relics with Jens Peter Nielson and Charles Lang in previous years, along with his whole collection to Chicago. But the commissioners also agreed to send some of Platte Lyman’s artifacts as well, along with some Navajo blankets. Then they roamed up and down the San Juan, taking pictures of various Indians, ruins, and relics.¹¹⁹ By the time Joe visited the fair, he could have communed with all these items from home.

The great exposition represented more to the people in Bluff than regional pride. They noted with interest the triumphant tour of the Tabernacle Choir under its conductor, Evan Stephens, through the Rockies and Midwest en route to the fair. The choir was even lauded by a kindly mob at Independence, Jackson County, Missouri, a place from which Mormons had been expelled fifty-five years before. The choir performed to similar acclaim at the Columbian Exposition, taking second prize and a ^[295] thousand dollars, with conductor Stephens earning a gold medal. It was a refreshing change in the winds of public opinion. “All seem now to vie in doing us honor,” Francis Hammond observed.¹²⁰ As the Church changed to become more like the outside world in its marriages and politics, outsiders were finding new ways to look at the Mormons.

But the other side of this coin was hinted at near the end of the fair by a young historian from the University of Wisconsin. Frederick Jackson Turner noticed that the supervisor of the Census declared after the 1890 enumeration that “the unsettled area [of the United States] has been so broken into by isolated bodies of settlement that there can hardly be said to be a frontier line.”¹²¹ This “end of the frontier” also meant that even as Gentiles began to praise rather than condemn Mormonism, they continued to crowd in around it. Mormons had been a distinctive people largely because they could live beyond American culture in the western wilderness. But now the world was closing in on them. With no new places of refuge, the main bodies of Mormons had to live amid a growing population of Gentiles.¹²² “The benefits of frontier isolation” were disappearing for the Mormons, but they were also beginning to enjoy the glow of inclusion after the Manifesto.¹²³ The obligation to be socially, economically, and politically distinct from the outside world was also fading, and anyone who tried to preach the old principles of ^[296] cooperation and self-sufficiency had a harder time of it.

Professor Turner also believed that up until 1890 “the existence of an area of free land, its continuous recession, and the advance of American settlement westward, explain[ed] American development.”¹²⁴ In this light, much of Bluff would make sense to Turner: the resolution of sturdy pioneers to tame a wild land, the pragmatism in the face of adversity, the sense of dominion over available resources, and the incredibly hard work were all there. But beyond these traits, Turner would have been frustrated with Bluff, because its residents did not do what he predicted. Instead of improvising new institutions and becoming more democratic, they had carried with them a predetermined pattern for their settlement and tried to become more orthodox, even when they had to modify their practices. Religious faith had little place in the young professor’s landmark historical thesis. But Bluff’s citizens soon found the opportunity to write that element into their own history.

Church historian Andrew Jenson visited the town in November of 1893. Jenson stayed with Bishop Nielson for two days and received “a full-hearted reception.” Ward members took Jenson up the river to tour the big cave, and he attended their Sunday meetings, during which he urged the people to keep journals. As John was told on Patmos, “What thou seest, write in a book.”¹²⁵ Then the Bluff Ward amazed him before he left:

After the evening meeting, Bishop Nielson surprised me by handing me $11.00 in cash, which he had collected for me to help bear my traveling expenses, and be it ^[297] here said to the credit of the good saints at Bluff, that this was the first time that the presiding officers in any of the settlements of the saints had taken steps to raise means to assist me on my travels. God bless Bishop Nielson and the saints in Bluff for their generosity.¹²⁶

The bishop then called David Edwards on a special mission to take Brother Jenson on to Burnham.

It must have warmed the Bluff Saints more to read the Church historian’s account of them in the Deseret News: “I have seldom, if ever, in my visits to the settlements of the saints in the Rocky Mountains, found a more open-hearted and appreciative people than the saints at Bluff.”¹²⁷ But they also were glad to see he published what they told him. After the 1884 floods, they reminded him, Elders Erastus Snow and Joseph F. Smith visited what was left of the town. President Smith promised that those who left would be blessed, but those who remained would be doubly blessed. Now, nine years later, Brother Jenson wrote, “A number of the present inhabitants of the place whom I have interviewed during my visit here are very anxious that I should state as a historical fact that the words of President Smith have had a literal fulfilment.”^{128 [298]}