THE MORMON EXPERIENCE - THE PLAINS AS SINAI, THE GREAT-SALT-LAKE AS THE DEAD-SEA, AND THE GREAT-BASIN AS DESERT-CUM-PROMISED LAND

The experiences of the members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons) in migrating across the Great Plains to the valley of the Great Salt Lake, in colonizing the Wasatch oasis, and in occupying major portions of the Great Basin gave rise to a collective and official landscape tradition within a few years of the migration and settlement process of the mid-nineteenth century. In this official tradition, the Mormon experience is viewed as analogous to the wanderings of the Children of Israel in the Exodus. The Plains, the Wasatch oasis, and the Great Basin are all viewed in this collective tradition as harsh, uninviting, desert landscapes. The traditional Mormon view of the Plains and Wasatch oasis as desert, derived from examination of Church records, speeches of elders, correspondence and newspaper articles, contrasts in almost all aspects with the actual accounts of the participants in Mormon migration and settlement. The records of migrants on the Mormon Trail present a pastoral view of the Plains and the earliest recorded impression of the Great Salt Lake Valley were of an abundant and bucolic region. The contrary official invented desert tradition persisted well into the mid-twentieth century, largely as a result of the belief that group identity can be reinforced by a tradition of shared hardship and by a glorification of the past. © 1992.