Chapter 5, “A Means of Preserving the Memory of the Mormon Pioneers”: LDS Recreation in the Great Outdoors
Sung to the tune of “Hi Ho the Merrio”:
It’s the wonder program of the century,
Hi Ho for Scouting, O she’s good enough for me.
Here’s a song for Scouting, let’s sing it merrily;
Hi Ho for Scouting, O she’s good enough for me.
Just like a good Scout we are growing,
We’ve started something and we’ll keep it going;
Half a million Boy Scouts,
A million more you’ll see—
Hi Ho for Scouting, O she’s good enough for me.
Then may all our Boy Scouts strong men grow to be,
Hi Ho for Scouting, O she’s good enough for me.
Full of zeal and honor and personality—
Hi Ho for Scouting, O she’s good enough for me.
And may our hearts thrill with elation
For scouting’s gift to the next generation;
Then let’s cheer old Scouting—
Cheer it lustily,
Hi Ho for Scouting, O she’s good enough for me.
SOME MEN HAVE THEIR MILLIONS (spoken),
SOME OWN LAND and SEA,
But give us good old scouting for (sing)
She’s good enough for me.—Fathers and Sons Annual Outing, Summer of 1927 pamphlet
Since American urbanization proceeded apace in the nineteenth century, the city had been the locus of fears regarding the loss of community and individuality. As early as the 1830s, urban dwellers (and critics of the rising cities) sensed that urban life rent the fabric of social deference that had once knitted colonial towns and villages into a unified whole. In urban areas where neighbors went unknown and reputations were untrustworthy, moral and financial exploitation quickly followed. Cities became, at [220] least to some observers, centers of social anomie where young men faced difficulty in forming an identity and acquiring moral bearings because they were so far away (quite literally) from the reach of village elders who had once determined appropriate social behavior. Elites in the burgeoning American cities struggled to create avenues of reform that would not only socialize young men but would also “Americanize” the flood of immigrants migrating to the city streets. Sunday schools, Bible tract societies, YMCAs, and settlement houses number just a few of the attempts to stabilize the city. Most reform efforts tried to bring order to urban chaos by teaching impressionable urbanites proper behavior. Because urbanization had created the bulk of the problems, reformers tried to recreate urban society at its roots—by reforming the rising generation of urban dwellers.1
The first “urban” generation in Mormon history presented LDS social leaders with similar problems—anomie, misbehavior, maladjustment. Much of the development of the Mormon recreation program stemmed from the social conditions apparent in LDS-dominated urban areas, particularly Salt Lake City. Because the initial urbanization of Mormon communities occurred largely in the twentieth century, [221] Mormon leaders turned away from the “settlement” pattern where reform was brought to the city in favor of a “rugged life” model that stressed outdoor experience. Like other contemporary reformers from Theodore Roosevelt to Lord Baden Powell, progressive-era Mormon leaders looked to nature to solve the social (and spiritual) problems besetting urban youth.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was born on the American frontier. Never in western New York, Ohio, Missouri, or Illinois had the Saints experienced urban living on a wide scale. Even in Nauvoo, Illinois, which boasted an estimated population of 15,000 in 1845, the Mormon settlement was situated at the very western border of the organized United States. Following the Mormon migration of 1847, most LDS members found themselves far removed from urban pressures for the remainder of the nineteenth century. Mormons, like most Americans, were farmers living in small communities throughout the Great Basin.2 Not much had changed the [222] LDS lifestyle since Joseph Smith left his father’s farm in Palmyra, New York to organize the religious movement. As the twentieth century dawned, however, Mormons and their leaders faced the unprecedented task of controlling a new generation of “urban” Mormons—young men and women who had never lived off the land and were wholly unfamiliar with the agricultural traditions of the church. This represented a new challenge to LDS leaders—one that required new techniques to teach young Mormons the lessons not only of their “frontier” religion but of “frontier” life as well. The benefits of frontier living—emotional and spiritual hardihood, independence, self-reliance, and hard work—would need to be taught by new methods. By utilizing the Boy Scout movement and other nature-based programs, including a large program of camping for young women, LDS leaders hoped to pass on the lessons of the pioneer past to the next generation of church members.
Soft in the City
In the early years of the twentieth century, Mormon leaders commonly spoke of the vices attendant to city living. In a series of jeremiads, church officials warned that young men, lured by the luxury and ease of urban life, were becoming soft. Noting how far the young men of Utah had fallen from the example of their hard-working forebears, one writer made clear the link between urban life and indolence. After a conversation in which the superintendent of a large smelting plant had remarked that Utah boys were [223] lazy and weak compared to the pioneers, the author admitted that: “The remarks embarrassed me—a Utah boy myself—and I found no explanation for this condition, which I trust, is not general.” Though not yet widespread throughout the church, adolescent inactivity, according to the author, “exists only in those localities where mechanical industry is beginning to invade the easy-going rural districts of our state. Even this observation, however, by one in a position to know, is a reproach to our young men, for, it should be remembered, Utah has for its emblem the hive of busy bees—the very motto of Industry.”3 A scant six years after the state motto and seal had been created (Utah gained statehood in 1896), the motto of “Industry” seemed to resonate only in rural areas. Urban locales—replete with “mechanical industry”—already seemed far removed from the swarm of busy bees inhabiting the state seal.
In a similar article six months later, young men again were condemned for rejecting the work habits and occupations of their pioneer forefathers. “The growing disposition of young men in our communities to shirk the arduous duties and drudgery incident to the learning of a skillful trade is very regrettable,” read one of a series of “Talks to Young Men.” “Many of the founders of our cities and towns were tradesmen, as well as financiers, and by reason of the success which their energy reaped, have reared their sons far more luxuriously than they themselves were reared.” Whereas many of his contemporaries hailed the effects of progress through natural selection according to the [224] tenets of social Darwinism, this author located a decline in LDS stock due to the ease of middle-class life in the city. “This comfortable environment has developed, in the rising generation, tastes for ‘nicer’ vocations; and the workshop is abandoned for the office, the bank, or the bar. The tendency toward professional callings has been stronger than it should have been during the past decade, and a return to the bench and workshop would today be proper for the majority of our young men.” Free from the lessons received from hard work, the youth of the church had fallen from the lofty heights attained by their fathers. In his final flourish, the author pled: “It will require grit and determination to lay aside habits for true character, and to put aside fine clothes and white linen, and put on overalls and jumper, and get to work in dust and grease and smoke, but that’s the sure way to make men.”4 The city—and the ease of its occupations—robbed young Mormon men of their masculinity, their true character. Effete occupations in the emerging professions seemed to be feminizing adolescent males, clothing their manhood in white linen and lace.
Church president Joseph F. Smith echoed the fears regarding degenerate youths and their fascination with the professions. During the church’s general conference in April 1903, President Smith spoke of “the need of teaching the young people to be producers, mechanics and artisans, rather than mere followers of the learned professions.” He encouraged manual training for young men and learning in the [225] domestic sciences for young women “so that they may be able to produce something for the general welfare.” Without belittling “scholastic attainments, such as the schools and universities lead the youth to acquire,” Smith extolled the virtues not of mechanical vocations but of agricultural life. He specifically “pointed out the need of knowing how to cultivate the soil to the best advantage, and of how to make articles needful for the comfort and convenience of the people, and of how to manage the practical affairs of home.” “The nobility of practical labor, and the contentment arising therefrom,” he contended, “will be more clearly manifest among the people.”5 The message, emanating from many voices, was crystal clear: the “young men of this community,” according to one author, “had lost the vitality of their fathers.” Like so many Puritan divines bemoaning the decadence of the second and third generation, modern-day Mormon Mathers recognized that the city had weakened the will of their boys. No longer working on the farm, or behind the workbench, the second and third generations of Mormon men had succumbed to the ease offered by urban professions. “These young men,” referring to those who had lost their father’s vitality, “are always on the lookout for ‘soft snaps.’ They shun difficulties. They abhor hard work. They swarm our [226] business colleges, studying how to become bookkeepers and stenographers.”6 The loss of vitality signaled not only diminished masculinity but a rise in flabby muscles and mushy morals as well.
Other Mormon leaders coupled the denigration of urban life with the glorification of life on the farm. One can hear the echoes of a Jeffersonian agricultural attitude in the words of Milton Bennion, professor of philosophy at the University of Utah who asserted that, “‘Cities are the graves of the human species.’ These words of Rosseau may be extravagant, but they are not wholly devoid of truth. The city not uncommonly becomes the grave of a whole family in the course of a few generations. On the other hand,” Bennion advised, “the farms steadily renew the population of the country districts, and at the same time pour a stream of recruits into the cities to renew and invigorate business and professional life.”7 Professor Bennion’s comments capture [227] the problem and the solution for progressive-era Mormons—the vice and the laxity of the cities were best countered by the virtues of agricultural life. In opposition to the corruption and depravity of the city, Mormon leaders characterized rural life as clean and healthy, even redemptive. According to spokespersons like Frank J. Hewlett, former president of the Salt Lake City Council, farm life offered an antidote to all the spiritual and physical ills that plagued young men in the city. “Were it possible to send out boys on a farm a part of the summer,” Hewlett recommended, “it would result to their advantage, both physically and morally. During their spare moments, they could study nature in the mountains, streams and valleys. They could study the flowers, birds and insects in their native environments. There is no young man that is so busy but he can devote a few minutes each day to the study of a book, and absorb every point that is for his intellectual benefit.”8 To Hewlett and others, it appeared so simple—to take the [228] city out of the boy, you needed to take the boy out of the city. Physically, morally, intellectually, even temperamentally, nature fixed the problems caused by life in the city. Though the bucolic rural conditions found in Hewlett’s purple prose may have never existed on most American farms, his argument resonated with many urban dwellers. As Dr. Richard R. Lyman, First Assistant Superintendent of YMMIA, claimed, “Our greatest men and our best citizens as a rule grow up on the farm.”9
Even before Hewlett called for young men to go back to the farm (at least during summer vacation), Mormon authors had begun to construct a poetic point of view that connected rural life and spiritual and physical well-being. An early articulation of this perspective appears in the poem “Beyond the City” written by Grace Ingles Frost in 1906:
Beyond the city’s busy hum,
Beyond its want, its sin and care,
I linger at the set of sun,
And feel that God is nearer there.
Beyond the city where the hay,
Newmown, with fragrance fills the breeze
That from my brow drives care away,
And ends in song among the trees.
Beyond the city and its toil.
It makes my heart forget its pain,
To watch the farmer till the soil,
Or gather in the ripened grain.
Beyond the city! That is where,
I fain would rest when life is done, [229]
Within the shadows of the hills,
Until he comes—the Holy One.10
In her poetic voice, Frost expanded on the vision espoused by Hewlett. Describing the city with words like hum, want, sin, toil, and pain and detailing a rural life of breezes, setting suns, and fresh cut hay, Frost’s Manichean dichotomy might just as well be comparing heaven and hell. In fact, the poet intimates that the triumphal return of Christ will occur in the “shadows of the hills” where farm folk reside “beyond the city.” God seemed closer in the country—surely even He must be more comfortable where the sky was blue and the air clean. W. P. Kinsella’s fictional Shoeless Joe Jackson was right—heaven was a lot like Iowa.
Perhaps the crescendo of the artistic glorification of farm life appeared in Evan Stephens’s 1918 paean to “The Farmer Boy.” Author of many LDS hymns and conductor of the Tabernacle Choir from 1890 to 1916, Stephens unabashedly celebrated the Jeffersonian yeoman ideal transplanted to the prairies of the far West:
I sing of the lad that tills the soil,
With the tan upon his face,
With his sturdy limbs, grown by honest toil—
Counting labor no disgrace, Counting labor no disgrace.
Ah yes I sing of the farmer boy,
And the joys that bless his life. [230]
He has health and wealth free of such alloy,
As the city’s noise and strife, As the city’s noise and strife.11
Tan farm lads produced not only foodstuffs but sturdy limbs by honest toil. It is difficult to imagine a progressive-era LDS psalm dedicated to “The Street Urchin” or “The Boy on the Corner.”
Others followed Frost’s artistic trajectory in painting a bucolic portrait of rural America. Nephi Anderson’s fictional story “The End of the Rainbow” described not only heroic Roni Jones’s flirtation with the city, but the Mormon urban experience as well. Following the unsuccessful courtship of a young woman in a nearby city, Roni returned to his country home and waxed sentimental about the location.
How good, thought he, to get home again; to see the unsullied blue of the sky, instead of the blackness of the chimney smoke; to smell the sweetness of all things growing, instead of the stench of mills, and mines, and streets; to hear the twitter of birds, the drone and chirp of insects, the soft whisperings of willow tops, instead of the clatter of paved streets, and the roar and rattle that men make when they crowd together into cities. He took long breaths of the air, and how good it was! He had been away nearly six months, but it seemed an age of wear and tear and confusion. His coming out of it all into this big, free, open country, was like being born again into a new world.12
Anderson’s artistic vision of Jones’s journey might well stand in for the Mormon urban experience. Latter-day Saints, like Jones, had not sojourned in the city long; however, [231] to many, “it seemed an age of wear and tear and confusion.” Urban amenities that typically earned praise garnered only criticism from Anderson’s pen—even paved city streets clattered and roared! Surely, in Anderson’s estimation, the sullied cities were not fit for the courtship of the Saints.
Though farm land played a significant role in the Mormon vision of rural beauty, many Mormon artists found anti-city inspiration in the mountains that ramparted many of the valley cities of Utah. To partake of the cleansing power of nature, one did not have to reside on a farm but it was necessary to leave the city. What life in the city had dissipated, nature’s canyons could restore. In the words of Annie D. Palmer:
With the call of the canyon my hunger returns,
That old school-time hunger that toil never earns;
The hunger that flavors each morsel just right,
And comes without coaxing, noon, morning, and night.
The games ’round the bonfire, the story, and song,
With the call of the canyon come crowding along.With the call of the canyon come memories sweet
Of the dawning of love with its chapter complete;
Of the timid response when my love was declared,
And her modest reserve in confessing she cared—
How I loved in the canyons to stroll by her side.
To the deeds of the grove where the feather-ferns hide.While the canyon is calling, I quicken my pace,
And clasp her again in a loving embrace;
Still just as angelic, as modest, as fair,—
And we plan a short rest from life’s hurry and care [232]
With our girls and our boys in a canyon retreat,
Where the gladness of nature our gladness will greet.13
Like Nephi Anderson’s fictional Roni Jones, love best bloomed in a clean, virginal natural setting and the sin of the city was washed off “on the river’s cool bank.” However, unlike Jones’s return to the farm, refreshment from the city’s canyons did not require a permanent relocation; rather, individuals and families could take a temporary “retreat” from the city and return revitalized to their urban responsibilities.
Recapitulating the Pioneer Past
Related to solving urban social and spiritual problems, retreating into nature was likewise seen as a method to bridge the generational gap that separated third and fourth generation Mormons from the founding generation of church leaders like Joseph Smith and Brigham Young. The earliest LDS leaders—including church presidents Brigham Young and John Taylor as well as respected apostles like Heber C. Kimball—had benefitted from membership in Joseph Smith’s inner circle. Their proximity to the Prophet not only provided them with intense spiritual and personal growth but also gave them legitimacy among the Mormon faithful. Appealing to the memory of martyred Joseph was an easy way to rally church members. Throughout the nineteenth century, church leaders could relate personal experiences with the Prophet: Brigham Young had been Joseph’s appointed successor; John Taylor stood by the Prophet when [233] he was felled by the mob at Carthage Jail; Wilford Woodruff was set apart as an apostle in 1839 and Lorenzo Snow first met the Prophet in 1831. Joseph F. Smith, church president during most of the first two decades of the twentieth century, represented the last link to the Prophet’s inner circle and the persecution that sent the Saints west. Born at Far West, Missouri in 1838 to Hyrum (Joseph’s older brother) and Mary Fielding Smith, Smith had known the Prophet while a youngster and had experienced severe tribulation traveling across the plains with his widowed mother. He would be the last LDS church president to be able to speak of the early persecutions in first person (Smith’s successor, Heber J. Grant, was born in Utah in 1856). As time further separated progressive-era Mormons from the Prophet Joseph, it seemed to compound the corrosion of the physical and social mettle of young Mormon men caused by the luxury and ease of the city. Spiritual slack had loosened the taut rope that had led Mormons through the darkest days of the church’s early existence. It was feared that the rising generation—free from the persecutions of Mormonism’s early days and personally unacquainted with the luminaries of the church’s founding—did not contain the spiritual fortitude necessary to move the church forward in the twentieth century. Not having passed through the refining fires of transcontinental migration and without personal memory of the Prophet or his immediate successors, young Mormons possessed few of the experiences that had fortified church leaders from the beginning. To resurrect the tradition of pioneer hardihood, Mormon leaders turned to nature [234] activities, particularly the Boy Scouts, to provide a frontier experience, if only by substitution.
Mormon efforts to “use” their history did not begin with camping trips and Boy Scout meetings. The closing decades of the nineteenth century saw a rush by Mormons to reclaim their pioneer past. In the 1880s, in an effort to revive and spread the story of Joseph Smith’s 1820 theophanic First Vision, LDS artist C. C. A. Christensen painted huge murals depicting the event. Displaying the canvasses throughout Utah and Idaho, Christensen ushered in a new era of reverence for the Prophet Joseph. In the following decade, Mormons organized a number of historical societies, including the Genealogical Society of Utah in 1894, the Utah Society of the Sons of the American Revolution the next year, and the Utah State Historical Society and the Sons and Daughters of the Utah pioneers by the end of the century. Likewise, emphasis began to be placed on male members of the church tracing their priesthood authority and keeping records regarding ordinations and other church ordinances. Missionaries were instructed to keep diaries detailing their daily events, and Mormons who owned pioneer diaries were asked to donate the historical materials to the church or at least allow church historians to copy them. Furthermore, around the turn of the century, the church began purchasing important sites in the history of the early church. Fittingly, purchases included the Solomon Mack home in Vermont and the Carthage Jail in Illinois, sites [235] commemorating the beginning and the end of the Prophet Joseph Smith’s life.14 Though the number of Saints able to remember the important events in LDS history was diminishing, the church went to great lengths to create an “organizational memory” to replace the personal memories of the dying pioneer generation.
The “founding” period of the church—stretching from Joseph’s First Vision to the forced migration to the Great Basin—was receding farther into the recesses of the past. A virtual death watch was instituted in the Improvement Era marking the passing of each known pioneer who had crossed the plains in the original 1847 migration. News capsules typically included information like “Ezra Shoemaker, of Manti, died in Salt Lake City, Oct. 1. He was born in Adams Co., Ill., March 20, 1843, and came with his parents, to Utah, in 1847. For the last seventeen years he was second counselor to Lewis Anderson, president of the South Sanpete stake.”15 In September 1922, on the seventy-fifth anniversary of the pioneer trek, a search of church members located 125 living pioneers from the 1847 crossing.16 Just two years later, in May 1924, the “last of the original pioneers who entered Salt Lake Valley, July 24, 1847, under the leadership of Brigham Young,” died in Shelley, Idaho. Lorenzo Sobieski Young, just seven years [236] old when he crossed the continent, died at age 84.17 No Latter-day Saint had the power to bring back the pioneer dead; it was hoped, however, that by initiating young LDS men in nature experiences, the spirit of the pioneers, in physical hardihood and spiritual strength, could be revived. To resuscitate the flagging pioneer tradition, Mormon leaders turned to an organization that built boys’ character and instilled discipline through experiences in the great outdoors. The Boy Scout program would not only help solve the problems of urban life, it would also connect Mormon boys to their pioneer past.
According to the reminiscences of one of the original Mormon Boy Scouts, the first Scout troop in the LDS church was organized in October 1910 by the Waterloo Ward in the Salt Lake Granite Stake.18 The impetus for sponsoring the Boy Scouts [237] came from a young English immigrant, Thomas George Wood, who had recently settled in the area. Wood “called to the attention of the ward’s Bishopric that the Deacons and Teachers would like to go on hikes.” Wood had done some research on Scouting while in England and had brought an English manual with him. Under the authorization of Bishop Asahel H. Woodruff, Wood organized a Scout Troop with the YMMIA of the Waterloo Ward as the sponsoring institution. The group quickly enrolled 50 young men aged 12 to 18. Though it was difficult for Wood to devise programs that would maintain the interest of all of the boys, the new Scoutmaster worked hard to learn the rudiments of the Scout program in addition to his study of “nature, the birds, trees, stars, campcrafts, out-door cooking and the virtues of manly living.” Regular meetings took place in the basement of the Waterloo chapel immediately following the YMMIA lesson. From the beginning, Boy Scouts in the LDS church was linked to participation in the youth auxiliary program. Many of the early Scout activities ring familiar: preparation of a Scout pack; nature study; first aid; knot tying; learning Scout laws; and performing good turns. Activities like marching drills and delivering wood to needy persons rounded out the troop’s activities. Outdoor adventures like hikes to Black Mountain and outings to Mountain Dell and Saratoga Springs offered prime [238] opportunity for nature study and transported the young men out of the city, at least temporarily.19
Not all church leaders, however, were convinced of the need for any youth organizations beyond the MIA. Elder B. H. Roberts, in charge of a committee investigating the possibility of including Scouts in the MIA’s program, reported the committee’s findings, “We are already provided with both sufficient and efficient organization to cover the field of activities proposed by Scouting.” Moreover, the committee believed that “to create new Scout units, or to confederate with other organizations would likely result in dividing the interest of the junior members of our associations, and perhaps wean them from love and loyalty to their organization founded through the inspired leaders of our Church, for which there would be and could be no compensating returns.”20 This announcement, made in June 1911, seemed to foreclose future Scout units within the church. Proponents of Scoutcraft, however, refused to admit defeat. Following B. H. Roberts’s announcement, one prominent church recreation leader—Eugene L. Roberts, director of Physical Training at Brigham [239] Young University—decided to place his arguments for Scouting in front of the Mormon people through the pages of the Improvement Era. Keenly aware of the desire of many young men to join the Scouting ranks, E. L. Roberts articulated a stance that placed Scouting activities squarely within the confines of LDS thought.21
In calling for a Scout-like “Boy Pioneers of Utah” (not expressly connected to the Boy Scouts organization), E. L. Roberts enunciated the major reasons that Mormon boys should become Scouts—to save them from the sins of the city streets and to teach young men the lessons of pioneer life. In the October 1911 Improvement Era, Roberts first turned his sights on the burgeoning city: “The world is experiencing an unprecedented age of city building. Cities in Europe as well as in America whose population has remained almost stationary for a century or more have, during the last twenty-five or fifty years, doubled their numbers while the country has been in danger of depopulation.” While a famine of farm folk was threatening enough, those migrating to the cities faced almost certain ruin. Roberts continued, “The city has become a hot-bed of civilization where so called progress is ground out at the expense of thousands [240] of lives yearly. Civilization and progress may be necessary, but the sacrifice of so many human lives to produce these results is evidently a blundering waste. If it were not for the continual influx of vigorous men and women from the farms and fields into the cities—if it were not for this stream of good red blood flowing, year after year, into the anemic, civilized centers, they would cease to exist.” Those living the “artificial life” of the cities suffered from a “perceptible degeneracy” which spawned various reform movements to “offset the unfortunate results and to reclaim mankind for the natural and the sane.” Even the “Mormon farmer” had been robbed of his “verile [sic] physical manhood and healthy mentality” by the advent of labor-saving farm machinery.22
To Roberts, the answer to the degeneration caused by urbanization appeared in the tenets and activities of movements such as the Boy Scouts, which “aim to correct the deformities, as it were, of civilization, and give the boys of the world a healthy point of [241]view in life.” Judging from the success of Boy Scout groups elsewhere, Roberts noted, “It is wonderful what transformation has taken place even in so-called incorrigibles after they have become interested in the scout organization. Many of the hordes of boys, running in packs like wolves through the streets of large cities, have been rescued from their lawless lives, and are now active workers in scout companies.” Though many of the principles espoused by the Boy Scouts applied to the circumstances in Mormon Utah, Roberts recognized that a program tailored specifically to Mormon ends would find easier success—both among the young men of the faith and the church’s hierarchy. Contending that the Boy Scout organization contained “features which do not apply to conditions in Zion, and it lacks much that is apparently needed in this community,” Roberts declared, “We need an organization of our own colored with our own ‘Mormon’ ideals and fitted to our ‘Mormon’ environment.”23
The main problem besetting Mormon youth centered around the descent of the rising generation from the faithfulness of their pioneer forefathers. Roberts’s description captures the urban-induced fear of many LDS leaders:
It was but yesterday that our fathers were engaged in various pioneer struggles. They made themselves a magnificent generation through their terrific fight against the desert and adverse circumstances. No one can read of their physical hardships and religious trials without being fired with admiration. But their work is finished; they have made the desert bloom and built up a commonwealth; and their sons, lolling in comparative luxury, are gradually forgetting their debt to their fathers. The pale, city-bred boy, who has never camped on the deseret [sic], nor seen the wilds, who has never tramped over the [242] hills, nor “roughed” it, cannot truly sympathize with the struggles of his father. He reads or listens to stories picturing the pioneer life, but he cannot appreciate; he imagines, but not clearly; thrills, but not deeply; is interested, but not enthusiastically.24
Urban life had destroyed the pioneer hardihood thought to be the center of the Mormon character. The lessons of their fathers failed to reach the ears of the city youth, drowned out by factory whistles, street cars, and commercial amusements. Admitting that the “pioneer life is gone,” Roberts feared the worst: “A generation hence and the sons and daughters of the pioneers may be just as shallow and frivolous and indifferent as the weaklings on the streets of New York, removed several generations from their pioneer ancestors.”25
The way to fend off the seemingly inevitable generational declension was found in a Boy Scout-like movement which would “bring the youth of Zion into close and lasting relationship with our fathers and forefathers!” Proposing the creation of the “Boy Pioneers of Utah” patterned after Brigham Young’s organization of the original pioneers, Roberts was the first to add a Mormon flavor to the Boy Scout movement. A Mormon group would “embrace all the salient features of the Scouts with more or less the same code of honor, the same activities, and with the same purposes in general.” The Boy Pioneers, however, would “aim to preserve the memory of the pioneers, and to teach reverence and sympathy for their religious struggles.” By camping out and [243] spending time in nature, boys would recapitulate the pioneer past and learn to imitate not only the harsh conditions of the frontier but also “follow [the pioneer] code of moral teachings.” In sum, Roberts predicted that the quasi-Scouting association would solve both of the major problems facing the church’s urban youth by offsetting the effects of city life and promoting a revivification of the pioneer spirit. The Boy Pioneers provided the answer to the church’s city-bred declension. “If such an organization did no more than stimulate a healthy enthusiasm and create a loyal admiration of these noble pioneers, who blessed these westerns deserts with their God directed efforts” wrote Roberts, “it would justify itself. But it will do more than this. Like the Boy Scout movement, it can be made a magnificent factor in the character-building of the young. It will help to offset the unfortunate results of civilization by giving the boys a sane attitude toward life, by creating in them a love for simple life and simple pleasures, and by stimulating their fullest physical and moral development.” As a “lasting monument to the memory of the pioneers,” the Boy Pioneers would assume significant religious importance by becoming “a veritable ‘passover’ in preserving the story of their pilgrimage across the plains and their subsequent struggle with the desert.”26
Roberts’s efforts to bring Scouting within the Mormon recreation fold proved successful. It appears that the arguments found in “The Boy Pioneers of Utah” even [244] affected B. H. Roberts, previously one of Scouting’s staunchest opponents within the church. Whether the “Boy Pioneers” idea appealed to Elder Roberts’s love of the Mormon past (as an assistant church historian, he was responsible for the editing of Joseph Smith’s History of the Church for republication and was also the author of a study of the LDS persecutions in Missouri) or his concern about the Mormon future, Eugene Roberts’s ideas seemed to have changed B. H. Roberts’s mind. Not long after Eugene Roberts made his case, Elder B. H. Roberts published an article in the Deseret News calling for the church to join the national Boy Scout organization.27 Whatever the reason for the change in policy, the MIA General Board adopted the name “M.I.A. Scouts” to cover the outdoor activities being pursued by young men in the church. Membership was limited to boys from 12 to 18 years of age.28 [245]
The rigorous life of outdoor activities struck a resonant chord among church members who had long venerated the memory of pioneer hardships. Now largely stuck in urban areas, Scouts provided young men with an organized program to recapture the pioneer past by spending time in the great outdoors. As the LDS church initially rallied behind the Scouting program, the main emphasis was not on instilling patriotism or teaching useful nature skills; rather, Scouting served as a proxy “pioneer” experience which taught young Mormon men the physical and spiritual skills of their forebears. To train young men for the future, Mormon leaders turned to a new program which was firmly rooted in the past. General YMMIA leader Lyman R. Martineau introduced the MIA Scout program to church members with an explicit link to the Mormon pioneers: “The great movement of the Church from Illinois and Iowa to these mountains in 1847, and the years immediately following, developed among both men and women the highest art of Scoutcraft, perhaps, that has been found among any pioneers in the history of our country. Loyal to country and to their religion, hardy and persevering, they made thousands of shining examples of choicest citizenship, brave, wise, and God-fearing.” Even in “scoutcraft” the pioneers had set the standard of patriotism, perseverance, and religious dedication. If the early Saints practiced a proto-form of Scouting, surely young men in the twentieth century could learn the same lessons by pursuing similar activities. And rugged outdoor activities were at the heart of Scouting. Scout leaders like Martineau hoped that by replicating pioneer conditions, modern Scouts could learn pioneer lessons. [246]
Although all frontier conditions could not be duplicated, urban Scouts made the most of the hardships at their disposal. Quoting from the Scout “Handbook for Boys,” Martineau praised the vigorous programs which required Scouts to be “systematically taking exercise, playing games, running, and walking. It means that he must sleep enough hours to give him the necessary strength, and if possible to sleep very much in the open, or at least with the windows of his bedroom open both summer and winter. It means also that he should take a cold bath often, rubbing dry with a rough towel. He should breathe through the nose and not through the mouth. He should at all times train himself to endure hardships.” The list of Scout “hardships”—cold beds and cold baths, rough towels and flared nostrils—point out the ridiculous methods by which character was to be built. Though church leaders never linked dry, hard skin with hard and fast morals, the notion persisted that hardship (in whatever variety, even self-imposed or contrived) preceded not only physical but spiritual growth. The primary purpose for incorporating Scouts in the LDS youth program, according to Martineau, was to make “our boys a more rugged manhood and more self-reliant characters.”29 If pioneer trials defied duplication, hardships would have to be created to test the boys. [247] Even in city homes, boys could triumph over frontier conditions—if they let the cold air in themselves.
Fittingly, one of the first major projects initiated by MIA Scouts involved the organization of a “Pioneer Trail Party” which hiked from Echo Canyon to Salt Lake City to commemorate the original pioneer trek and to call attention to the need for an automobile road along the route. Throughout the hike, church leaders like B. H. Roberts related pioneer experiences to the boys and pointed out remnants of the pioneer experience, like the canyon fortifications of 1858. In Echo canyon, the group sang “with spirit and feeling heretofore unexperienced in their lives” the hymn of the original pioneers, “Come, Come, Ye Saints.” Lessons were also taught using pioneer artifacts including a banner containing all of the names of the original 1847 company, made by the Relief Society at Winter Quarters. Many boys examined an old buckskin coat which had been worn by Thomas Bullock on the original trek. When the group stopped for lunch at the Henefer meetinghouse, church leaders including President Anthon H. Lund and Elders Francis M. Lyman, Orson F. Whitney, and Hyrum M. Smith delivered “stirring pioneer and patriotic speeches.” Some of the boys, however, thought these orations “lasted a long time” and were relieved when lunch was finally served. At each camping location on the trek, a post was constructed with the inscription, “Mormon Pioneer Trail, 1847—M.I.A. Scouts passed here July, 1912.” These markers reified the connection between the 1847 pioneers and the Boy Pioneers of the progressive era. The re-creation of the pioneer march exemplified the goals of [248] urban LDS Scouts to “obtain inspiration for the admirable work of the pioneers, to enjoy a pleasant outing, and to get some education in nature, discipline, and history.” Hiking along the pioneer route introduced the young men to trail life and reminded them of the adversities faced by early Mormons. Calling for an auto route to parallel the trail—the introduction of modern transportation as another tool to recapture the past—seemed a perfect fit for a group of urban boys living (temporarily) in the tradition of their ancestors.30
In addition to the lessons learned by recapitulating their pioneer past, Scout programs were intended to help young Mormon men become upstanding citizens. Although temptations abounded in the city, Scout groups offered an outpost where citizenship, loyalty, and discipline enjoyed prime importance. Extolling the ability of Scouting to reform wayward boys and direct rudderless urban youth, social critic Jacob Riis explained that Scout programs were “getting at the boy on his own ground, setting him to do the things he ardently wants to do, but, in our cities with their twisted social conditions, doesn’t know how to do.” The problem, according to Riis, was that “every boy has in him a little savage and a potential good citizen. The question is which is to get the upper grip; . . . Give him the street and the gutter for a playground, rob him of his play, and he joins the gang and learns the lessons that do not lead to respect for authority or property. . . . The savage has come uppermost, and he lives the law of the [249] jungle.” If society, however, were to offer the boy a leisure-time alternative through Scouting, the disrespectful urban savage could change his stripes and would “adopt the Scout law to be dutiful, obedient, helpful, and clean, with the same enthusiasm.” Though the city Scout and the city savage started from the same point, “it [was] the way they work out that makes the difference.”31 Involvement in Scouting brought the best out in boys, according to Riis and others. Within the organization resided the ability to uplift boys and direct them toward positive behavior. In an article outlining the merits of athletics and Scout work in the church, LDS Scout leader Oscar A. Kirkham quoted a poem that cut to the heart of Riis’s message:
Here’s to the Apache of the street!
Lawbreakers of today, lawmakers of tomorrow;
Builders of cities; kings and princes of America—
My boy, your boy, everybody’s boy,
God bless them all!32
Scouting would take the “Apache of the street” and, as the editor of the Improvement Era described, direct the “exuberant spirit of the boys” in the proper direction. As Scouts, boys learned “to love nature in the open, care for themselves and their comrades, to render first aid to the injured, find their way in the mountains and forests; and, above all, the youngsters are taught wholesome discipline, and a tenderness for the weak, a [250] respect for the rights of others, reverence for good men and women, good things and places.”33 Discipline and respect—the lack of which seemed to form the core of most urban “savages”—distilled into the young man naturally from participation in Scouting programs. Urban reformers and Mormon leaders agreed on that potential.
Scout leaders, within and outside the LDS faith, regularly opined about the ability of Scouts to take “the boy at that time of his life when he is beset with the new and bewildering experiences of adolescence and divert his thoughts therefrom to wholesome and worth-while activities.”34 The positive potential of Scouting appeared boundless. According to Boy Scout National Commissioner Ludvig Dale, in a speech delivered at MIA annual conference in June 1915, Scouting translated the “desires and the ideals and the ambitions of the average, normal boy into controlled action” and showed him “what to do, and [kept] him so busy that he [hadn’t] the time to don’t.” In Dale’s estimation, the program not only eventuated in “clean minds, clean hearts, efficient hands” but ultimately resulted in a “better city, better state, and a better nation.” LDS leaders surely nodded in agreement with the Scout leader’s conclusion. Dale, however, went even further, claiming that participation in the Scouting program could have averted the war raging in Europe: “What would have happened, if fifty years ago there had been boy scouts? I could see French boy scouts, and English boy scouts [251] send a message to their brother boy scouts in Germany; how we regret that you, brother boy scouts, should be at enmity, because we have learned to be imbued with sentiments of patriotism and good feeling, and we hope that the war will soon be over, never again to come, because of the boy scouts. These are the kind of principles the boy scouts are learning.”35 Though critics feared that the uniformed, disciplined Scouts contributed to the type of jingoistic nationalism that led to the conflict, Scout leaders maintained a flawless faith in the organization’s ability to uplift the behavior of young men throughout the world.
Mormon leaders looked to Scouts to foster a dual citizenship which combined state and church. As MIA Scout commissioner John Taylor advised parents, a good Scout was not only a better son and a better citizen, he was also a “better member of the Church.”36 The spiritual aspects of Scouting had concerned LDS leaders from the beginning. Before allying the MIA Scouts with the national Boy Scout organization, [252] church leaders received assurances from the national BSA council that the church would be allowed to select the leaders of LDS troops. Furthermore, the national council promised church leaders that they could use the Scout program “in whatever manner best served the purposes of the Church and with a distinct provision that Scout leaders would be permitted to make whatever religious application they desired in conducting the program.” Non-LDS boys who participated in Mormon-sponsored troops, however, were not required to participate in any LDS religious rituals.37 When Oscar A. Kirkham announced that the church had “joined the national organization in this great movement for the salvation of boys,” he was surely framing the issue in both social and spiritual terms.38 Initially, Scout work was conducted in addition to the regular MIA weekly program. Even before the MIA Scouts affiliated with the national organization, Lyman Martineau promised that the Scout involvement would not supersede the regular work of the YMMIA. In fact, he believed that “scoutcraft will add enthusiasm and loyalty to the regular work of Mutual Improvement and other organizations.”39 Shortly thereafter, however, the infectious enthusiasm of Scouting had overtaken and replaced the standard MIA program of religious study. Where once Scout activities had [253] supplemented religious learning, it was decided that “religious training definitely would be included through application of the spiritual teachings of the Boy Scout program from the L.D.S. viewpoint.”40 Scouting had not only become a method to learn about the Mormon past, it was also a method to teach LDS theology as well. As Norma Geertsen poetically described the spiritual values required “To Be a Scout”:
To be a Scout—oh, what an aim!
To live a life; to play the game;
To do each day that kindly deed;
To help some worthy soul in need.To be a Scout and hike along
The mountain path and lilt a song.
To make a bed where winds have trod,
Makes man and boy both think of God.41
Geertsen’s poetic image mirrored the vision that prompted the LDS church to turn whole-heartedly toward Scouting: young Mormon men (and their fathers) leaving the city to hike mountain paths in a virtual recapitulation of their pioneer ancestors. Along the way, they not only gained a profound respect for nature but also turned their thoughts to God. Another LDS poet, Ivy Houtz Woolley, concluded that the eventual reward of Boy Scout service would be eternal splendor:
Oh, boy band, oh, joy band,
Your laws are heaven’s laws:
When living by your noble code,
Who could on sin’s brink pause? [254]
Oh, boy band, oh, joy band,
Press forward heart and soul,
Climb on and on, for on the heights
Awaits your sought for goal.42
Mormon Scouts, at least in Houtz’s formulation, followed in the footsteps of the ancient prophet Moses who scaled Mount Sinai to find God in a burning bush. The twentieth-century “joy band” of Boy Scouts—situated as latter-day “youth of Israel”—likewise found God by trekking to the mountain tops.
Though LDS church officials used the Scouts as a vehicle to increase church attendance and adherence, representatives of the Boy Scout organization similarly stressed the positive facets of troops sponsored by religious bodies. During one visit to Salt Lake City, Chief Scout Executive James E. West categorically advocated mixing religion and Scouting: “A scout is reverent. He is reverent toward God. He is faithful in his religious duties, and respects the convictions of others in matters of custom and religion. Because of the deep concern in the religious instruction of the youth of America, we have very definitely advocated the troop being organized in connection with the church, so that there might be given to the boys of that troop all of the influence, all of the traditions, which stand back of that church.”43 Church and MIA officials could not have agreed more; quickly Scouting became an effective recruiting [255] and teaching tool refined in particular ways to meet the social and spiritual needs of Mormon youth. Given such wide berth, LDS leaders picked up the ball and ran with it.
By 1915—just five years after Waterloo Ward had sponsored the first Scout troop in the church—more than 3000 young men participated in LDS-sponsored Scouting activities. From 1915 to 1921, the number of Mormon Scouts increased nearly fourfold. Though the church had officially affiliated with the Boy Scouts of America in 1913, a considerable number of wards and stakes continued to sponsor Scouting activities without actually registering their boys with the national organization. For example, statistics for 1918 show that 3705 boys had registered with official BSA troops while another 2162 participated in LDS Scouting activities beyond BSA recognition. The next year, 4528 registered with the national organization and 3708 participated in local, unaffiliated programs. From 1915 to 1922 (not including 1919), the number of Scouts registered with the BSA increased at an annual rate of 19.5 percent. For 1918, there were more Scouts in Utah, in proportion to the population, than in any other state. For every 137 people in the Beehive state, there [256] was one Scout.44 And by 1923, every stake in the church, with the exception of Colonia Juarez in northern Mexico, housed at least one registered troop.
Whenever possible, LDS leaders integrated aspects of Scouting with the existing programs of the YMMIA. By modifying Scouting methods—often by creating special requirements for Scouts and their leaders—the church tailored Scouting to suit its own needs and interests. More than just preaching about the pioneer characteristics fostered by the organization, MIA officials ensured that Scouting involvement deepened Mormon religious beliefs and increased allegiance not just to the Scout program but to church policies. Not surprisingly, like athletics, Scout activities became a device which leaders employed to attract increased attendance at MIA meetings. MIA Leaders of the Ogden (Utah) Ninth Ward, suffering from sparse attendance, decided that “Scout work was [their] only salvation” and decided to concentrate their recruiting efforts along Scout lines. Within about a year, enrollment in the ward association had increased from five boys to nearly one hundred, according to Scoutmaster Robert E. Wilson.45 Scout [257] work played such an important religious role in the lives of many young Mormon men that one MIA leader proposed that Mormon Scout masters should be allowed to focus on that particular work without the distraction of additional church responsibilities. MIA Scout commissioner John Taylor observed, “The scoutmaster comes in such close touch with the boy that unless he is a boy leader, he cannot accomplish what he should accomplish through the scout program. A man who can guide twenty or thirty boys in their play and recreation and . . . impress upon them the necessity of giving service to their church, and living in conformity with the principles of the gospel, is doing a sufficiently valuable work that should entitle him to some relief from other ward duties.”46 Taylor deemed the spiritual survival skills taught by Scoutmasters to be sufficiently important to warrant their undivided attention. Like Sunday School teachers, Scoutmasters inculcated conformity to church standards and deserved the respect due religious role models.
In the spring of 1922, Apostle George Albert Smith directed a circular to all stake YMMIA superintendents which outlined a method to ensure that church-sponsored Scouting activities strengthened activity in the youth auxiliary, rather than competed with it. Speaking for the YMMIA General Superintendency, Smith requested that local Scout leaders be “men of faith, integrity, and ability” and that at least one member of the ward MIA presidency should play an active role on the Scout committee. [258] Stake superintendents were instructed to meet regularly with Scout leaders to ensure that “the spirit and atmosphere of the gospel [was] maintained in scout work.” To spiritualize weekly Scout meetings, Smith advised local leaders to make the MIA Junior Manual a prominent part of the session. At the close of his letter, Smith reminded leaders that the Boy Scout program remained an appendage of the MIA auxiliary. The apostle asked that the stake superintendents “call the scout men together and impress upon them that scouting is but an aid to the Y.M.M.I.A., in which we are striving to teach the principles of the gospel of Jesus Christ. . . . All scout leaders are, of course, Y.M.M.I.A. officers, and should be brought into conference with the other association officers at all times.”47 As one component of the association’s diverse offerings, Scouting provided one effective way to train young Mormons to follow gospel teachings.
Just as athletics was used as a lever to induce young men into complying with the LDS dietary code, Mormon officials required Scouts and their leaders to obey the principles of the Word of Wisdom. The 1925 YMMIA Hand Book prescribed that under the MIA’s leadership, “no person shall be chosen a scout official who uses tobacco.” Noting that Scouts promised to keep themselves physically clean, the handbook prohibited young Scouts from using the illicit substance as well. However, when a Scout showed an “inclination to try to overcome the habit, and his actions are [259] consistent with his promise to try,” he was to remain in the troop and receive encouragement from Scout leaders. If, on the other hand, the boy “wilfully disregards his promise, and does not try to discontinue the habit within a reasonable time,” he was to be suspended from the organization until his behavior conformed to the MIA’s abstinence requirement. Following expulsion, the Scoutmaster must “continue his efforts with the scout until he has accomplished a reform.”48 In Scouting, like athletics, the church found a malleable social control device. At times, the threat of expulsion acted as a “stick” to punish wayward young men, while on other occasions, the lure of fun and fraternity within the organization acted as a “carrot” to entice the boy to modify his behavior.
Not every requirement in the Boy Scout handbook comported with church standards, however. When elements of Scouting conflicted with LDS essentials, Scouting had to give way. For instance, Scout leaders needed regular reminders that the physical, outdoor aspects of Scouting were not in accordance with Mormon standards for the Sabbath day. Where associations met on Sunday nights, Scouts could participate in lectures or recitations on Scout subjects. Talks on first aid, the Scout laws, and nature received official approbation. Physical activities, such as bandaging, signaling, drills, knot tying, or Scout demonstrations, however, did not pass church [260] muster and had to be performed on other nights. Though the religious aspects of Scouting had gained acceptance within the church, the boys’ organization did not meet LDS standards in every issue. Therefore, certain Sunday activities were prohibited “in order that nothing may be introduced that will tend to undermine the boys’ respect for sacred Sabbath.”49 Even the Scout “cheer”—venerated for “bringing the boys together, making each one feel more closely related to the others”—was to be eliminated or performed silently on Sunday. Scouts were directed to sing familiar melodies as a substitute.50 Other Scout-based prohibitions included Sabbath-day hiking. When several Scout groups sponsored hiking excursions that began on Saturday afternoon and continued over Sunday, the question arose whether this was appropriate for Mormon youth groups. Even when religious exercises were held on the Sabbath, the general board concluded that “we do not feel at liberty to sanction any ‘hikes’ that include any portion of the Sabbath day.” This one aspect of the Scouting program (hiking and nature excursions) had challenged a long-standing slogan of the YMMIA: “We stand [261] for a Sacred Sabbath and a Weekly Half Holiday.”51 In this case, Scouting yielded to the Sabbatarian principles of the church.
Other, more fundamental Scout activities likewise clashed with Mormon sensibilities. The YMMIA Hand Book for 1925 requested that LDS Scouts and Scout officials not participate in the traditional Scout hand clasp. In its place, LDS Scouts substituted the American hand shake. Additionally, Mormon Scouters were instructed to use the phrase “Scout Promise” instead of “Scout Oath.” Furthermore, Scouting rituals—including the official induction ceremony and advancement from one class to another—could be made “very impressive” but should remain “simple and dignified.” “Ceremonies” were not to be used.52 Though the reasons never received full articulation, it is not difficult to understand why church leaders drew the line at taking “oaths” and participating in secular Scouting ceremonies. Ceremonial aspects of Scouting may have been passed over in deference to the sacred ceremonies performed in Mormon temples. Perhaps it was feared that an association with Scouting ceremonies might diminish the impact of the holy activities within the temple. Scriptural injunction also proscribed the taking of “oaths.” In the Sermon on the Mount found in the New Testament, Christ warned his followers, “Swear not at all; neither by heaven; for it is God’s throne: Nor by the earth; for it is his footstool: neither by Jerusalem; for[262] it is the city of the Great King. . . . But let your communication be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil.”53 The book of James insisted that all who made superfluous oaths would “fall into condemnation.”54 The fear of Christian condemnation trumped any attraction to the secular ceremonies and oaths pertaining to the Boy Scouts. In the early years of Mormon Scouting, when religious imperatives clashed with Scouting programs, Mormon leaders rejected portions while remaining loyal to the larger program.
Aligning with the Boy Scouts helped progressive-era church leaders combat two of the most disturbing trends of their era—the effects of urbanization on young Mormon men and loss of pioneer fortitude in the rising generation. Though the seemingly relentless process of urbanization could not be stopped by hiking in the canyons or taking cold baths, Boy Scouts provided an inoculation against the perceived effects of living in the city. By taking the boy temporarily out of the city and introducing a respect for nature and the past, it was hoped that Boy Scouts would turn young Mormon men into modern boy pioneers. Like the half-way covenant in Puritan New England, Mormon leaders used the Boy Scouts to increase the connection between the religious organization and members of the third and fourth generation who seemed [263] to be falling away from the church. Scouts maintained the interest of young men in the church and helped pave the way for the church to thrive in new urban surroundings.
Summer Camps and Working Women
The social pathologies that attended city life did not affect boys alone. Though Scouting provided one avenue of relief for Mormon boys, LDS girls likewise needed a program to save them from the sins of the city. The main concerns regarding urban young women did not center on the declension from a heroic past. Rather, the increasing numbers of working women and the mounting monotony of their employment in offices and factories led church officials to institutionalize nature programs that removed girls from the confines of the city. By building spacious and well-appointed summer retreat homes, stakes throughout the church conscientiously advocated nature activities as a means to mitigate the storm and stress of city life for young women. These summer homes were not merely a feminized version of the pioneer recapitulations of the Boy Scouts. Instead, the homes provided physical and spiritual recuperation for city-bound working women by offering an affordable resort location in the canyons around Salt Lake City and picturesque spots elsewhere. As one pamphlet described the summer programs at the Girls’ Camp in Logan Canyon, the camp brought “rest, recreation, and inspiration” to Mormon women usually mired in the workaday stresses of urban life.55 [264]
Before the major impetus for building summer homes appeared, and paralleling the church’s involvement in Boy Scouts, the YLMIA adopted the Campfire Girls program as the main element of their 1913 summer activities. The relationship, however, quickly soured when the Campfire organization rejected modifications proffered by the Young Ladies’ auxiliary. Following a year of experimentation, the YLMIA created its own program (the “Bee-hive Girls”) which bore a “direct application to our Church and western home.”56 This brief flirtation—indicating an interest in nature programs overwhelmed by a desire for more influence within the national organization—portended the centrality of an annual outdoor experience that became the focus of the YLMIA’s summer activities.
The regular YMMIA and YLMIA season—where young men and women met weekly for class work and activities—lasted from September to June. In agricultural areas with abundant farm work throughout the summer months, this schedule allowed adolescents to stay at home and help on the farm. In urban areas, however, when school released students for the summer, the increased leisure time was spent not working but playing. Filling the long summer days became a primary concern for church youth leaders. For the Young Men, Scouting kept hands busy tying knots and camping. Young women in the church, on the other hand, were left with more mundane tasks to occupy their lazy days. Outdoor meetings, MIA reading course books, book reports, [265] needle work, and handicrafts failed to maintain high attendance levels during the summer months. Girls needed something else to do. Following the example of the successful Scouting initiatives, several stake YLMIA leaders devised a summer camping program to keep the girls interested during the annual summer break.57
In addition to the lull of the summer months, other urban factors motivated YLMIA officers to look to nature for social and spiritual salvation. The YLMIA presidency of Salt Lake City’s Liberty Stake, sponsors of the first LDS girls’ summer home, explained their rationale for constructing the “Liberty Glen Camp” located beyond they city’s borders in the south end of the Salt Lake valley. They wrote that the “conditions surrounding our girls have greatly changed within the past few years” primarily because “scores of [girls] are now engaged in offices, department stores, and factories, and others are in school.” Furthermore, because this generation of young women enjoyed more spending money than previous generations, “many of them feel compelled through fashion’s demands to dress better, and to expend their money more freely than in previous years.” Because working girls spent their money so frivolously, they rarely had the necessary funds to spend their vacation days at a reputable summer resort. Even when young women in their teens and early twenties possessed the means to relax at a resort location, they “ordinarily return[ed] more exhausted from the [266] strenuous conditions of such a life than they were before they left home.” To aid these working women, the officers of Liberty Stake’s YLMIA decided to “provide a place where the girls could enjoy nature’s luxuries to the fullest extent; and at the minimum cost.”58
The “Liberty Glen Camp”—named for the sponsoring stake and the beauty of the surrounding countryside—was located on the farm of James Godfrey, about one mile east of the Salt Lake suburb of Murray. This location provided not only plenty of available drinking water but also an “abundance of fresh food direct from the farm.” Liberty Glen was not designed to be a rigorous outdoor survival experience like the Boy Scouts but was intended to be a retreat where urban women could recharge their physical and spiritual batteries. Located beyond the shadows of the city’s spires, the summer camp was just twenty minutes from the nearest street car line and five minutes from Godfrey’s home. Easily reached from the city, the camp presented “every feature of one remotely situated from civilization.” Though removed from the comforts of the city, these civilized women enjoyed civilized accommodations. Cots with clean straw mattresses—made up with sheets, pillows, and pillowcases brought by the camper—provided a nightly resting place within the spacious sleeping house (20' by 40'). Electric lights and access to Godfrey’s telephone reminded campers of their close connection to the outside world. The presence of a piano, donated by the Consolidated [267] Music Company, made sure the girls had “many of the conveniences of the home” and “all the luxuries of an outdoor life.” During the summer of 1912, each camper paid approximately three dollars for their summer stay at Liberty Glen. Most campers paid the fee in cash; others provided bread, fruit, and butter to cover their costs.59
Underneath the American flag waving atop a forty-foot pole, the activities at Liberty Glen were largely unorganized. Each day, a different group of three campers received assignments to cook, wash the dishes, and clean the campsite. All other campers used their time as they chose. During a week’s stay at the camp (the sessions ran from Saturday to Saturday so “those going home would be ready for work Monday morning”), young women fished, hiked, and swam in addition to their camp responsibilities. A special day each week was set aside as “Mother’s Day” when visitors were entertained with bonfires, candy-pulls, concerts, and open-air dances. Despite its name, other visitors on “Mother’s Days” included fathers, ward authorities, and friends. Campers roundly considered these days the highlight of the week’s activities.60
Campers at Camp Atoka, the girls’ summer camp for which the most information exists, participated in activities much like their sisters at Liberty Glen. Located in South Fork Canyon and operated by the Ogden Stake, Atoka summer campers enjoyed the freedom to plan most of their own activities. Hiking, wading and [268] swimming in the river, and campfires at night kept the girls busy. Anna Saunders Easthope, a camper in Atoka’s early days, remembered playing records on an old Victrola as well as reading a book on the lives of Madame Chiang Kai-Shek and her sisters.61 Camp rules were simple, if not always followed:
1. Lights out at 10:30 p.m.
2. Clothes should be modest.
3. Keep the camp clean.
4. Strictest: don’t go out on the highway and hitch rides.
5. Don’t leave the camp boundaries without permission.
6. Always say morning and evening prayers.
7. American flag is raised in the morning and retrieved by sundown.62
Parents’ night—complete with campfire and a program of storytelling, readings, skits, musical numbers, and sing-a-longs—provided a chance for families to get together and enjoy the natural setting. On Sunday, entire wards journeyed up to South Fork to hold sacrament meeting and testimonial services with the girls. Not all activities at Atoka, however, were quite so proper. Periodically, fights broke out among campers. On one occasion, two young women “punched and slugged it out” after one camper had dragged her muddy feet across a floor being cleaned by another camper. Often campers taped their initials on their backs and suntanned. The pale initials announced to others that the owner of a monogrammed back had been to camp. During a costume contest one year, a camper pulled her bathing suit down to her waist and tied a huge sunbonnet [269] across her chest. Dancing in front of her peers, her nude appearance shocked and stunned the audience.63 Atoka, it seems, was a place where fun and faith, revelry and reverence went hand in hand.
Like the proponents of Boy Scouting, outdoor activities prompted many of the participants to wax poetic about their experience. One example, dedicated to the founders of the Liberty Glen camp, captured the force of nature as it revealed itself on the edges of Salt Lake City:
Twittering birds and rippling brooklets
Mingle with our cheerful song,
While the merry peals of laughter
With the breezes float along.
Round the camp-fire, songs and stories
Crown the pleasure of the day,
Gentle moonbeams guard our slumber,
Happy girls of M.I.A.
We have wandered in the meadows,
We have waded in the streams;
We have banished care and sadness
And have dreamed the sweetest dreams.
Life has been a round of pleasure
In this glen of Liberty;May the peace that here attends us
With its founders ever be.64
Expressed in such soaring sentiment, it is easy to imagine that the girls of Liberty Glen had been camping on a grandiose Bierstadtian canvas rather than a twenty-minute walk [270] from a Salt Lake streetcar suburb. To women cloistered in the artificial canyons of city corridors, the fresh air and sweeping landscapes at Liberty Glen not only supplied a change of scenery but allowed them to recuperate from the long workdays of the preceding year.
The success of the Liberty Glen experiment encouraged other stakes to construct summer retreats for their young women. In Logan canyon, the YLMIA of Logan Stake raised a cobblestone and log structure which could accommodate sixty campers. Built nearly a decade after Liberty Glen, the MIA Home in Logan Canyon more closely resembled a commercial resort than the facilities of a church camp. Twelve huge cobble stone pillars rounded the building providing both structural integrity and an imposing facade. Inside, three immense exposed logs supported the upstairs sleeping quarters. Thirteen windows (screened and with wooden blinds) offered a “splendid view” in all directions from inside the cabin. Complete with dining room, cozy living room, kitchen, and small hospital, the facilities created a beautiful backdrop for evenings of “songs, stories, games, fun, and laughter.” Modern lavatories, containing showers, basins, and toilets, completed the home’s creature comforts. Paid for by fund raising efforts including a carnival, apron bazaar, and vaudeville show, the home supplied a location where “girls will be chaperoned and well cared for and given a [271] happy outing—a rest, a change, a bit of wholesome recreation that every girl should have every year.”65
By the summer of 1924, five summer homes were operating and four more had been planned. “Mutual Isle” in Provo Canyon boasted a swimming pool and interesting rock formations; American Fork’s “Mutual Dell” was close to Timpanogos Cave as well as a hiking trail to the 11,000 foot peak of Mt. Timpanogos; the “MIA Girls’ Summer Home” at Lakota on Bear Lake in northern Utah received praise for its boating facilities and horseback riding.66 The crown jewel of the girls’ summer camp system was located twenty miles up Big Cottonwood Canyon—the “MIA Girls’ Summer House” at Brighton. Operated by the four Salt Lake City stakes and built in 1922, the Brighton home stood on the south rim of Silver Lake basin at the base of Mt. Wolverine and Mt. Milicent. An imposing structure, the log home stood three stories high and measured 140' by 40'. The main floor contained a long spacious dining room and a reception hall. At each end of the building a “big cheery” fireplace welcomed cold campers after an evening swim. The upper floors housed sleeping apartments complete with good beds and comfortable mattresses. More than one hundred girls could be accommodated at once. The Brighton home set the standard for other LDS summer camps. As one [272] report affords, “No one who loves the great out of doors will find a resting place more attractive” than the Brighton home.67 Few would have disagreed.
The primary philosophy underlying the construction of elaborate summer homes was voiced by Emily H. Higgs of the YLMIA Summer Camp Committee in 1924. Writing for the committee, she asserted that “joy, rest, recreation and companionship under beautiful conditions is the rightful heritage of every girl whether rich or poor.” Although it sounds like Higgs and others may have wanted to democratize (or socialize) the availability of the summer resort experience, that was just part of their message. Mormon girls may not have gone to the mountains to recreate their pioneer past, but they were expected to learn lessons and gain insights from their time spent in the woods. Leaders wanted girls to leave their stifled lives in the city and “to live for a time free and apart from the confusing influences and petty irritations which daily routine may impose.” The camps, however, were more than just a respite from the hurly burly life in the city. YLMIA leaders believed that the natural beauty surrounding the camps would turn girls away from the city as well as elevate their thoughts heavenward. One Summer Camp committee member instructed the girls to keep “A Log of the Camp” which recorded the week’s outstanding events. The list of probable topics included “happenings in which God’s providence is manifested” which would help the “M.I.A. girls of the future [to] catch a glimpse of the faith and [273] wholesome sweetness, the charm of the girls of today.”68 Claire N. Hulme, chairperson of the Summer Home Committee in the Cache and Logan stakes, provided the purest pronouncement regarding the ability to commune with the divine through nature. “The consciousness of God is a gradual growth with most of us,” Hulme contended, and “we understand best the power and goodness of the Creator of all by acquaintance with and appreciation of His works.” Continuing, Hulme proposed that “through sleeping among the tree-tops, as we do in our camp, with the stars shining upon our beds, there are moments when the most thoughtless girl realizes, if but dimly, the wonder and glory of it all. And she sighs to feel that the least things of Nature are apt to be greater than the noblest of man’s achievement.” Bombarded by the concerns of the city and faced only with the marks of “man’s achievement[s],” girls met little opportunity to find God on city streets. It was only “living in the canyon for a time” that could produce this “attitude of mind and make the heart responsive to the greatest, though the invisible, things in life, such as love, justice, and service.” According to Hulme, this “renewal of the spirit” was possible only through the “subtle charm of nature.” Hulme concluded that camping opened the girl’s minds to spiritual concerns better than any other activity. “It is so apparent to us that our home has brought not only joy, but ethical and spiritual values into the lives of hundreds of girls, that we pronounce [274] camping, under proper conditions, one of the very finest activities an association can provide for its membership.”69
By building large, comfortable homes in beautiful natural settings, leaders of the Young Women’s auxiliary institutionalized nature programs as part of the organization’s offerings. Working women—mired in urban offices and factories—received an annual opportunity to rest and recuperate in a resort-like setting at a minimal cost. Moreover, because young Mormon women could leave their quotidian concerns behind, the great outdoors offered an unparalleled opportunity for a young woman to commune with her Creator.
A Natural Bridge across the Generation Gap
The Boy Scouts and Girls’ camps furnished the bulk of outdoor activities for progressive-era Mormon adolescents. Another noteworthy outdoor social activity was also instituted in the first decades of the twentieth century—an annual Fathers and Sons camping excursion. As early as 1919, the YMMIA made provision for a summertime camp outing for all fathers and sons in the church. Under the administration of local stakes and wards, camping merely offered an excuse for boys and their fathers to spend time together. Little direction was given to local officials: “Have a vacation, do something different, get close to your boys, go out into the open country and play, sing, rest, and worship.” As long as campers stayed in the open for at least [275] three days, and avoided resorts which “interfere[d] with the camp social spirit,” it was thought that the inter-generational camping experience would be “one of the most pleasurable and profitable of the season.”70
In the following years, the list of prescriptions and proscriptions increased but the rationale behind the church-sponsored camping trip remained simple—by getting boys and their fathers together in a natural setting they would grow closer together. Men could impart wisdom to their sons; boys could learn from the experience of their fathers. Church leaders had long recognized the detrimental effects of absentee fathers who spent long hours in offices and factories to the neglect of their children. Because too many fathers spent the majority of their time away from the family, many adolescent males had grown up without the necessary fatherly advice and direction. After asking fathers, “Are you chums [with your son]? Or merely acquaintances?” A model invitation responded, “Some fathers are too busy to discharge their most important responsibility—the proper rearing of their children. Every boy NEEDS the companionship of his father” [emphasis in original].71 In fact, the father’s influence in his son’s life was so meaningful that mothers were to be left at home. “While some might think that it would be splendid to have the mothers along, this one annual outing [276] is being taken for those wholesome effects that can come only from the association of fathers and sons.”72 The 1927 pamphlet added that “every mother should be happy to know that her son has the intimate companionship of her husband for a few days, sleeping in the same blankets, receiving his counsel and advice.”73 By institutionalizing an annual gender-exclusive outing for fathers and sons, the YMMIA sought to foster inter-generational connections and counteract the corrosive effects of modern life on young Mormon men. In making the annual outing a camping trip, organizers hoped to capitalize on the spiritual and social recuperative powers of nature, just like the Boy Scouts and girls’ camps had looked to the great outdoors to return civility to city-bound boys and girls.
YMMIA leaders professed glorious expectations of the tri-partite combination of fathers, sons, and the outdoors. The pamphlet describing the Fathers and Sons outing for the summer of 1925 captured the organizer’s high hopes. “Fathers and Sons outings offer great opportunity for fellowship and companionship between father and son,” began the pamphlet. “The great out-of-doors is a natural setting in which this purpose may be best accomplished. While the period is very brief, lasting perhaps from three to ten days, yet because of the close relationships which it brings—in sleeping, eating, hiking, playing, fishing, enjoying one another; great opportunities are offered for [277] the formation of lasting friendships.” Father-son friendships meant a generational détente—a warming of familial relationships that allowed sons to see their fathers in a new light and provided fathers with a chance to teach their offspring important lessons. Foremost, the outdoor setting made it much easier for fathers to approach their sons about spiritual topics. “The campfire is a real opportunity for spiritual growth,” argued YMMIA leaders, because “when father and son sit on the same log by the camp-fire, a warmth of real companionship is established. The hour is a sacred one.” Spending time with his son, away from the city’s commotion, permitted the father to gain a “better understanding” of his boy and opened an avenue for him to “counsel with him about the pit-falls that might prove dangerous.” Home, farm, and business responsibilities were also more easily discussed among the beauties of nature. Concern over the dwindling patriarchal contribution to young men’s lives prompted the call for annual camps. Boys not only needed to learn from their fathers, fathers needed to reclaim the patriarchal role with their sons. Far away from the din of urban siren songs, both generations needed to be reminded that “the best leader for a boy to follow is his own father.”74
But boys did not follow their fathers into the wilderness simply to sit at their feet and learn the lessons of life. Indeed, the campers were reminded to ensure “that there shall be opportunities for fun as well as for serious thought” during their summer [278] sojourn. Every boy, the pamphlet advised, possessed a “natural desire to go to places, to see things, to get out of doors into the big world.” As part of the “great environmental urge,” boys heard the “call of the open spaces, of the towering peaks, of the lakes and streams and the woods.” There was more to discover in “God’s great wonderland” than Dad’s discourses alone. Moral messages played a key role but Fathers and Sons outings were meant to be fun. Hiking, fishing, boating, and stories told around a glowing campfire made up just a portion of the camp’s amusement. On “Boy’s Day,” the young men treated their fathers like favored guests by assuming responsibility for all camp chores like cooking, cleaning, and entertainment. For “Dad’s Day,” the pattern reversed. A day of sports—including a variety of activities so that all could participate—kept the campers busy playing horseshoes or mass volley games. In many camps, a stage built from a hay rack provided the backdrop for an evening of dramatic and comedic sketches. “Pioneer Night” found the group around a campfire listening to a “noted pioneer” from the local area whose stories might “stimulate interest in a program of inspirational pioneer incidents.”75 And no camp was complete without the singing of songs (most acclaimed were the parodies of popular tunes) as the fire’s embers drew their last hot breaths. One such original song, written by Dr. George H. Brimhall and sung to the tune of “Old Oaken Bucket,” illustrated the high hopes surrounding the yearly camping trips: [279]
The castles I built in my mind for the future;
The jolly good times that our gang always had;
The yearnings I felt for a closeness with nature;
And then the great outings I had with my dad.The long-wished for outings; the joy-giving outings;
The heart-clinching outings I had with my dad.I’ve been with good fellows, and some that were ‘yellows,’
Been thrown midst the lure of the tempters of men;
But there was one lever, that held me up, ever,
When I might have fallen again and again.
The thought of my mother—yes, there was another;
And when it arose—then I could not be bad.
It’s presence o’er-whelmed me; when memory compelled me,
To think of the outing I had with my dad.The long-ago outings; the heart-clinging outings;
Those soul-saving outings I had with my dad.76
Other songs celebrated “the Dad who thinks enough of his boy to take the time for a game of ball” over the father who was “so very busy making ‘cash.’”77
What the city had torn asunder—boys from their busy working fathers—a few days camping in the country might put back together. Almost from the start, Fathers and Sons outings enjoyed widespread popularity. In the summer of 1923, more than 8000 fathers and sons satisfied the “environmental urge” by spending several days in [280] the great outdoors.78 Judging from the popularity of the outings (they continue in the church today), the great expectations of inter-generational reconciliation had largely been fulfilled.
As Mormon life moved more and more to the cities of twentieth-century America, LDS leaders instituted a number of programs designed to relocate Mormons (at least temporarily) to the frontier setting where pioneer values had flourished. “Rugged life” movements like the Boy Scouts not only taught young men the skills of frontier survival, they reconnected an urban generation with its pioneer past. For the young women of the church, annual pilgrimages to rural “resorts” built by the church offered a respite from their worldly labors as women workers. Camping in the great outdoors also brought fathers and sons together in a setting far removed from their urban homes. As the burgeoning conservationist movement groped it way toward an understanding of the value of the American wilderness, Mormons were institutionalizing outdoor activities as a vital part of their social and spiritual programs. Written in 1906, before most of the church’s nature programs had been created, the first lines of Grace Ingles Frost’s poem “Beyond the City” captured the movement’s essence and provides a fitting epitaph: [281]
Beyond the city’s busy hum,
Beyond its want, its sin and care,
I linger at the set of sun,
And feel that God is nearer there.79 [282]
1. For one view of the social anomie caused by unabated urbanization in the middle nineteenth century, see Karen Halttunen, Confidence Men and Painted Women: A Study in Middle-Class Culture in America, 1830–1870 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982). The most comprehensive discussion of urban reform efforts is found in Paul Boyer, Urban Masses and Moral Order in America, 1820–1920 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1978). A first-person account from one reformer appears in Jane Addams, Twenty Years at Hull House (New York: Penguin Books, 1961).
2. See Ronald W. Walker, “Golden Memories: Remembering Life In a Mormon Village,” in Ronald W. Walker and Doris R. Dant, eds., Nearly Everything Imaginable: The Everyday Life of Utah’s Mormon Pioneers (Provo, UT: Brigham Young University Press, 1999), 47–74; Dean L. May, “It Takes a Village: Social Character in Rural Settlements,” in Walker and Dant, eds., Nearly Everything Imaginable, 75–88; Richard Neitzel Holzapfel and David A. Allred, “A Peculiar People: Community and Commitment in Utah Valley, in Walker and Dant, eds., Nearly Everything Imaginable, 89–115; Richard H. Jackson, “The Mormon Village: Genesis and Antecedents of the City of Zion Plan,” BYU Studies 17, no. 2 (1977): 223–240; Dean L. May, “The Making of Saints: The Mormon Town as a Setting for the Study of Cultural Change,” Utah Historical Quarterly 45 (Dec. 1977): 75–92; Dean L. May, Three Frontiers: Family, Land, and Society in the American West, 1850–1900, Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Modern History, ed. Robert Fogel and Stephan Thernstrom (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994); Lowry Nelson, The Mormon Village: A Study in Social Origins, BYU Studies, no. 3 (Provo, UT: Research Division, Brigham Young University, 1930).
3. “Talks to Young Men: I. Industry—Its Bearing on Success,” Improvement Era 6 (Nov. 1902): 55.
4. “Talks to Young Men: VIII—A Trade,” Improvement Era 6 (June 1903): 603–604.
5. “Editor’s Table—Seventy-Third Annual Conference of the Church,” Improvement Era 6 (May 1903): 545.
6. “Talks to Young Men: V—The Same is Damned,” Improvement Era 7 (March 1904): 367. The author, however, did qualify his condemnation by adding, “Not that I would be understood as implying that all bookkeepers and stenographers are shirkers; for as a class they are honorable enough, when they enter their profession from right motives.”
7. Milton Bennion, “To the Young Men on the Farm,” Improvement Era 12 (March 1909): 371. Not all Mormon leaders, however, preached a return to the farm. President Franklin S. Harris of Brigham Young University argued against the concept of leaving the city. From an economic perspective, Harris wrote, “The decrease in the relative number engaged in agriculture is looked on by some as being a bad condition, and they are all the time talking about ‘back to the farm’ and of keeping the boys on the farm. As a matter of fact, the condition that has developed is probably the most wholesome that could exist, because, in these days of machinery, it is possible for one farmer to produce as much as several farmers could previously, and this leaves the other workers free to manufacture such commodities as will raise the general standard of living. . . . So that rather than to mourn at the fact that there are relatively fewer farmers, we should really welcome this condition, since it means that those who are farming will have a much better opportunity to make a living wage that if the old high percentage of farmers were maintained.” See Harris, “Changes in Occupation,” Improvement Era 27 (March 1924): 428. Earlier in the century, others had argued that rural dwellers were often so far away from the church’s influence that they fell away. Specifically, Apostle M. F. Cowley warned about shepherd boys who had begun smoking when they were “away from home and the benefits of an elevating and refining influence which usually attends home life; and away from the social, spiritual, and intellectual influences which attach to every well-regulated ward throughout the Church.” Though sheep herders presented an atypical example, it was clear that rural areas were not free of vice and sin. See Cowley, “Counsel to Boys Engaged in Isolated Labor,” Improvement Era 7 (March 1904): 364.
8. Hon. Frank J. Hewlett, “What of the Boy in Summer Time?”, Improvement Era 11 (May 1908): 534.
9. Dr. Richard R. Lyman, “Reclamation,” Improvement Era 27 (April 1924): 505. Lyman’s text had originally been delivered at the 17th Annual International Farm Congress at Kansas City.
10. Grace Ingles Frost, “Beyond the City,” Improvement Era 9 (Sept. 1906): 881.
11. Evan Stephens, “The Farmer Boy,” Improvement Era 21 (Jan. 1918): 250–251. For a more complete description of Stephens’s career and life, see D. Michael Quinn, Same-Sex Dynamics Among Nineteenth-Century Americans: A Mormon Example (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1996), 231–242.
12. Nephi Anderson, “The End of the Rainbow,” Improvement Era 13 (June 1910): 699.
13. Annie D. Palmer, “The Call of the Canyon,” Improvement Era 18 (May 1915): 661.
14. For a more complete account of the church’s attempts to recapture the past, see James B. Allen and Glen M. Leonard, The Story of the Latter-day Saints (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1976), 446–448.
15. Improvement Era 26 (Nov. 1922): 92.
16. LeRoi C. Snow, “Pioneer Celebration,” Improvement Era 25 (Sept. 1922): 1020.
17. “Passing Events,” Improvement Era 27 (May 1924): 707.
18. There has been some dispute about which was the first Scout troop to be organized by the church. One history of Scouting in Canada claims that the Aetna troop in Cardston deserves the honor. “In the year 1910,” writes Edward H. Hansen and Glen A. Hansen, “King Edward VII made a decree to organize the Boy Scouts of Great Britain throughout the British Empire. It was in the fall of 1910 that the Boy Scouts of Great Britain came to the Cardston district to find sponsors and get Scouting started here. They had no luck in Cardston at this time, but the group received a warm welcome in the Aetna Ward by Bishop Nathan W. Tanner. He was so full of love and concern for his people that he eagerly accepted this new program which appeared so promising for the young men. . . . He went right to work to get Scouting started in the Ward. He called James Henry Tanner to be the first Scoutmaster of the First Aetna Troop which was the first Scouts sponsored by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.” See Hansen and Hansen, “Scouting in Aetna and Cardston District,” 1. The typescript is located in the LDS Historical Department, Salt Lake City.
19. Richard Strong Best, “History of Troop 1, Boy Scouts of America, Salt Lake City, Utah, Waterloo Ward, LDS Church, 1910–1916” (Farr West, UT: R. S. Best, 1984), 1–3, 10. The self-published reminiscences can be found in Special Collections, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah.
20. Both quotations found in Scott Kenney, The Mutual Improvement Associations: A Preliminary History, 1900–1950 (Task Papers in LDS History, No. 6), 15. For more information, see B. H. Roberts, George H. Brimhall, and Benjamin Goddard, “The Boy Scout Movement in Utah,” Improvement Era 14 (April 1911): 542.
21. Roberts’s reasons for publishing his views in the Improvement Era appear in his personal files located at Special Collections, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University, Provo, UT. He discusses the article about the Boy Pioneers in Container 1, Folder 11. Roberts explained the impact of Elder B. H. Roberts’s decision: “This report was keenly disappointing to a rather large group of young men, I was one of these. At the conclusion of the meeting I returned to Provo and immediately began to write an article in defense of Scout activities. In this article I took the stand that if the church is not ready to become a member of the National Organization it should create its own organization which might well be called THE BOY PIONEERS OF UTAH or some other appropriate name.”
22. Eugene L. Roberts, “The Boy Pioneers of Utah,” Improvement Era 14 (Oct. 1911): 1084–1086. By at least one account, the Mormon pioneers and the seventeenth-century Pilgrims had a great deal in common. By forging a link with their own past, Mormons therefore also created a connection with the first European settlers of New England. Preston Nibley made the connection: “There is truly a striking similarity in the coming of the Pilgrim Fathers to the Atlantic coast, in December 1620, and the march of the first body of ‘Mormon’ Pioneers to the shores of Great Salt Lake, in 1847. Both groups of people were in quest of a place where they could be free and independent, and worship God as their consciences dictated. For this inestimable privilege they were willing to forsake all that in a worldly way was near and dear to them, face the hardships and perils of a long journey, and endure the suffering which was sure to be theirs in the settlement of a new and strange country.” Through the rigors of Scouting, progressive-era Mormons hoped to tap into the moral heritage of the Pilgrim-Pioneer continuum. See Nibley, “The Pilgrim Fathers and the ‘Mormon’ Pioneers,” Improvement Era 15 (July 1912): 774.
23. Roberts, “Boy Pioneers of Utah,” 1089.
24. Ibid.
25. Ibid.
26. Ibid., 1090–1092.
27. Late in his life, Eugene Roberts reported that his Improvement Era article had directly impacted B. H. Roberts’s change of heart. In an unpublished passage found in his personal collection, E. L. Roberts noted: “Having completed the article I took it to President George H. Brimhall of the Brigham Young University for his appraisal. The president was enthusiastic and asked for a copy. This he took to Salt Lake City. Whatever sequence of events followed I have never been told. However, not long after President Brimhall took my article to Salt Lake City Elder B. H. Roberts published in the Deseret News a long and convincing argument in defense of Scoutcraft in which he proposed that the church join with the National Boy Scout Organization. . . . Just what part [his article] played in causing the church committee to reverse its decision I don’t know and most probably never will know. President Brimhall insisted it was the direct cause. However, it is more than likely that I had some influence.” See E. L. Roberts Collection, Container 1, Folder 11.
28. “Mutual Work—M.I.A. Scouts,” Improvement Era 15 (Jan. 1912): 287.
29. L. R. Martineau, “M.I.A. Scouts,” Improvement Era (March 1912): 359, 357, 361. The desire to equate twentieth-century Scouts with pioneers of the nineteenth century occurred not only in the United States. In January 1926, when the church organized a Scouting troop in Hamburg, Germany, the legend of the Mormon pioneers migrated across the Atlantic. Describing the German group, it was recorded: “A spirit of cooperation, not unlike that of the pioneers of Utah, prevails among these pioneers of Scouting in this land.” See Aaron C. Taylor, “Mutual Work—M.I.A. Scout Work in Hamburg, Germany,” Improvement Era 30 (Feb. 1927): 381.
30. “Over the Pioneer Trail,” Improvement Era 15 (Sept. 1912): 1033–1034,1036, 1038.
31. Jacob A. Riis, “The Boy Scouts,” Improvement Era 17 (July 1914): 871. Riis’s essay first appeared in the 24 October 1913 edition of The Outlook.
32. Quoted in Oscar A. Kirkham, “Mutual Work—Athletics and Scout Work,” Improvement Era 19 (Feb. 1916): 375.
33. “Editors’ Table—Boy Scouts,” Improvement Era 17 (March 1914): 385.
34. This phrase appeared on the MIA Scout application form. Quoted in “Mutual Work—Of Interest to Scouts,” Improvement Era 17 (Aug. 1914): 996.
35. Ludvig Dale, “What Boys Scouts Must Know and Be,” Improvement Era 18 (Aug. 1915): 922. The next year, MIA Scout commissioner Dr. John H. Taylor defended church Scouts against cries of militarism. “Have you the idea that the scout organization is military in its nature, and will teach your boys to kill and destroy? If such an idea were correct, you would be doing exactly right in keeping your boy out of it. . . . When the boy becomes a scout, to destroy life takes on new meaning; the birds, the insects, the animals, demand his protection, and become immune from useless and reckless destruction. The mission of the scout is to save life, not to destroy it.” Taylor then discussed the uniform as a “serviceable suit” for Scout work as well as the necessity of drilling as a means of orderly transportation. See Taylor, “For the Consideration of Parents,” Improvement Era 19 (Jan. 1916): 239–240.
36. “Mutual Work—Boy Scouts—Organization and Purpose,” Improvement Era 17 (Aug. 1914): 894.
37. George Q. Morris, “Thirty-five Years of Scouting in the Church,” Improvement Era 51 (May 1948): 275.
38. Oscar A. Kirkham, “Mutual Work—What Can Be Done With the Boys, Brethren?”, Improvement Era 17 (March 1914): 489.
39. Martineau, “M.I.A. Scouts,” 360.
40. Morris, “Thirty-five Years of Scouting,” 312.
41. Norman Geertsen, “To Be A Scout,” Improvement Era 32 (May 1929): 598.
42. Ivy Houtz Woolley, “The Boy Scouts,” Improvement Era 27 (Feb. 1924): 380.
43. Oscar A. Kirkham, Improvement Era 26 (April 1923): frontispiece.
44. See “Annual Report of M.I.A. Scouts, Year Ending May 31, 1918,” Improvement Era 21 (July 1918): 833. Typically, the Improvement Era reported the annual growth of the Scout movement. In addition to above report, see: “Passing Events,” Improvement Era 18 (March 1915): 468; “Athletic and Scout Work—Progress of Scout Work,” Improvement Era 18 (July 1915): 842; “Mutual Work—Athletics and Scout Work,” Improvement Era 19 (July 1916): 849–850; “Mutual Work—An Analysis of the General Statistical Report of the Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Association for the Year Ending March 31, 1921,” Improvement Era 24 (Aug. 1921): 946–947; “Mutual Work—Dr. Taylor’s Report of Scouting, 1922,” Improvement Era 26 (Feb. 1923): 393.
45. Robert E. Wilson, “A Hike to the Yellowstone,” Improvement Era 18 (June 1915): 706.
46. “Annual Report of M.I.A. Scouts, Year Ending May 31, 1918,” Improvement Era 21 (July 1918): 834.
47. “Mutual Work—The Scouts and the Y.M.M.I.A.,” Improvement Era 26 (March 1923): 484.
48. Edward H. Anderson, Y.M.M.I.A. Hand Book: A Guide for Stake and Ward Officers of the Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 7th ed. (Salt Lake City: General Board, 1925), 121.
49. “Mutual Work—Scout Work on Sunday Night,” Improvement Era 17 (Aug. 1914): 894.
50. For the quotation, see “Scout Cheers or Yells,” Improvement Era 17 (Dec. 1913): 186. The prohibition of the Scout cheer on Sunday night appeared in “Mutual Work—Suggestive Outlines for Y.M.M.I.A. Freshmen Class for December,” Improvement Era 17 (Dec. 1913): 183. A far cry from the recommended familiar melodies, one cheer suggested by MIA Field Secretary Oscar A. Kirkham virtually dripped with patriotic enthusiasm: “Zing a Zing! Boom! Boom! Zing a Zing! Boom! Boom! M.I.A. Scouts, Boom! A-M-E-R-I-C-A, Boy Scouts! Boy Scouts! U.S.A.” See “Scout Cheers or Yells,” 186.
51. “Passing Events—No Hiking on the Sabbath Day,” Improvement Era 19 (March 1916): 478.
52. Anderson, Y.M.M.I.A. Hand Book, 121.
53. Matt. 5:34–35, 37.
54. James 5:12.
55. “The Girls’ Camp in Logan Canyon,” 2. This pamphlet is located in the LDS Historical Department, Salt Lake City.
56. Quoted in Kenney, Mutual Improvement Associations, 17.
57. See Elsie Ellen Hogan Van Noy, “Young Ladies Mutual Improvement Associations from April 1927 to December 1937,” 1. Van Noy’s typescript is located in the LDS Historical Department, Salt Lake City. Van Noy had been the general secretary of the YLMIA during the period described in her memoir.
58. “Liberty Glen Camp,” Young Woman’s Journal 24 (Jan. 1913): 31.
59. Ibid., 31–33.
60. Ibid., 32–33.
61. Carol T. Hines, Camp Atoka: A History, 1912–1980 (Reno, NV: self-published, 1987), 8.
62. Ibid., 12.
63. Ibid., 9.
64. “To Our President,” Young Woman’s Journal 24 (Jan. 1913): 34.
65. Amy Lyman Merrill, “M.I.A. Home in Logan Canyon,” Young Woman’s Journal 33 (May 1922): 292–293.
66. “Y.L.M.I.A. Summer Homes,” Young Woman’s Journal 35 (June 1924): 310–311.
67. Sasie Heath, “Brighton Home,” Young Woman’s Journal 34 (June 1923): 377–378.
68. “Y.L.M.I.A. Summer Homes,” 311.
69. Claire N. Hulme, “Is Camping Worth While for Y.L.M.I.A.?” Young Woman’s Journal 35 (June 1924): 313–314.
70. “Mutual Work—Father and Son’s Outing,” Improvement Era 22 (April 1919): 549.
71. “Fathers & Sons Annual Outing, Summer of 1925” (Salt Lake City: General Board of Y.M.M.I.A., 1925), 4.
72. Ibid., 5.
73. “Fathers and Son’s Annual Outing, Summer of 1927” (Salt Lake City: General Board of Y.M.M.I.A.), 5.
74. “Fathers and Sons, 1925,” 3.
75. Ibid., 9.
76. Dr. George H. Brimhall, “Outings With My Dad,” in “Fathers and Sons, 1925,” 10.
77. Ibid., 11.
78. “Mutual Work—Fathers and Son’s Outings,” Improvement Era 26 (Sept. 1923): 1067. For descriptions of a number of outings, see “Fathers and Sons’ Outings, and other Y.M.M.I.A. Activities,” Improvement Era 25 (Oct. 1922): 1052–1060; and “Fathers and Sons’ Outings,” Improvement Era 26 (Oct. 1923): 1142–1148.
79. Frost, “Beyond the City,” 881.
