Acknowledgments
I am grateful to those who took time after plowing, between sandstorms, and even during roundups to preserve parts of Bluff’s past, whether they were clerks, letter writers, census takers, or simply those who recalled stories, and whether or not they were conscious of their contributions. Francis A. Hammond and Albert R. Lyman were extremely conscientious diarists, almost always backtracking when they missed a day. They have preserved better than anyone the past life of Bluff and its settlers, from heroic to petty, triumphant to discouraged. President Hammond’s journals illuminate the administrative side of the town, from the top down, and we would know little about its workings or Bishop Jens Nielson’s life during certain years without these records. Albert Lyman started his journals as a thirteen-year-old boy, and nothing in my research gave me as much pleasure as figuratively growing up in Bluff with this guileless, enterprising lad. His diaries discuss many of the same events as Francis Hammond’s, but from the much different view of youth looking up at life.
Much has changed between the late 1800s and now, and without the developments of our modern world I could not have written this history. Donna Jensen and Mike Halliday’s work to collect documents and photographs related to Jens Nielson on CD-ROM has been enormously helpful; many of these items would have escaped me without it. The Internet has only begun to live up to its potential for historical research, but it was helpful in many ways. Footnoting is not nearly as arduous as digging ditches or maintaining a frontier household, but without this computer and its software (which crashed only at noncrucial times and in nonfatal ways), I could not have done it. I am glad our society thinks enough of its past to invest in the libraries and archives, as well as their able staffs, that were invaluable to this project. The Department of History at Brigham Young University sponsored me through scholarships and assistantships, and the Alpine School District allowed me to take a sabbatical year, all of which helped keep food on our table while I contributed nothing immediately useful to society. I am not sure I would be comfortable finding out the impact air conditioning had on the interpretations found in this history, but I am glad it exists.
The members of my graduate committee have contributed not only their knowledge and professionalism but also their understanding, patience, and sympathy throughout the process of writing this thesis. They are responsible for many of the improvements; I retain ownership of all the mistakes. I am especially grateful to my dear wife, Jolene, for her encouragement and long-suffering. She and the five children we have welcomed since I started writing about Bluff could have had a lot more fun, especially in the summers, if I did not do it. I dedicate the finished product to her and to my idiocratic grandma Ila Nielson Sundwall, who was, until a few weeks before I finished my thesis, my living link to Bluff.
