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Narrator: It was predicted to be the biggest event ever to occur in Utah. Leaders proclaimed, "the world is welcome here."
They promised visitors would flow to Utah, like what they see, and admire the people and place. Utah was told the outsiders would bring money. Money that would trickle down and touch every household. It was called an opportunity of a lifetime; perhaps the opportunity of a century. To change, yet somehow remain the same.
The year was 1869. The isolation of the nation's most unique territory was about to end, as men raced from east and west to meet at a place called promontory.
They promised visitors would flow to Utah…Like what they see…and admire the people and place. Utah was told the outsiders would bring money. Money that would trickle down and touch every household. It was called an opportunity of a lifetime…perhaps the opportunity of a century. To change…yet somehow remain the same.
The year was 1869…the isolation of the nation's most unique territory was about to end, as men raced from east and west to meet at a place called Promontory.
[program underwriter]
[program open]
Narrator: In the spring of 1868 invaders ripped through the farmlands of the Utah territory. Viewed by settlers as a plague of near-biblical proportions, the invaders threatened to cut the very life-line of the people. Dropping like thick blankets from the sky, swarms of grasshoppers descended on the croplands of Utah.
"Endowed with an almost incredible voracity, breeding with astonishing rapidity, and keeping together in innumerable myriads they form one of the most terrible plagues. They devour and poison, and everything green of which they eat is blighted. And where they invade a land in sufficient numbers, their presence may well be viewed as a national calamity." The Deseret News
Narrator: In the spring of 1868 the grasshopper invasion was a calamity for the Utah territory.
[David Haward Bain] "They'd had three years of drought, they'd had at least two summers of either grasshoppers or locusts; they were strapped for cash; they were really strapped for food, they had their seed stores that they could use for more plantings, but it was really a question of just how they were going to make it through."
Narrator: Twenty years after the first permanent settlements were created by members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Utah territory of the late-1860s was still living a hand-to-mouth existence.
Having sought isolation in the American West because of their strong sense of religious persecution, the people referred to by outsiders as "Mormons" focused on survival---feeding their numbers that continued to swell with European converts, and building what they viewed as the Kingdom of God on earth.
[Bain] "The sense of isolation was profound. Newspapers were few and far between, mail was always late, and there was that sense of being despised and hated and distrusted by the outside world. And all of these things would have just increased that sense of isolation, of not being understood, and not really being wanted."
Narrator: Isolation was a two-edged sword for the Utah territory. On one hand it largely left the people to practice their religion on their own terms, including the increasingly controversial practice of plural marriage.
On the other hand, isolation left Utah in the backwater of an economic boom in the American West. There was virtually no cash among the Mormon people, who largely lived by bartering through church organization.
Any hit to the bartering chain--such as grasshoppers destroying crops- could stun the fragile Utah economy.
Managing the balancing act of isolation for the Mormon people fell to one of the most unique figures in American history. Brigham Young had organized the Mormons when they were on the brink of extermination…led them west…and directed the settlement of a harsh land. By the late-1860s nearly 60,000 members of his church had followed his call to gather in the Utah territory.
[Michael Quinn] "And so the Mormons in Utah, and even those who had emigrated from Europe, looked to Brigham Young as a savior. Not necessarily a religious savior, but as a cultural savior, someone who had saved their culture from utter destruction."
Narrator: From his office in Salt Lake City, Young was the defining force of the Utah territory. He exercised a unique authority--- dictating civic affairs, defining cultural standards, planning settlements and economic policies…and, for his people, he was a living prophet of God.
[Leonard Arrington] "It's incorrect to try and offer one interpretation of Brigham Young and say he was this, he was that. He was all of them. And these did not result in any conflict in his own mind, in his own character. He was supremely confident that the lord has appointed him to do this work."
[Peter Maughn] "Damage done to the crops all over this valley the last two days. Damage is very severe. Most of the oats and barley destroyed. Grasshoppers are still coming by the score… Peter Maughn"
Narrator: In the spring of 1868, Brigham Young felt his God was providing an answer to the grasshopper plague and the economic drought attacking his people.
To the east and west he watched the answer race toward the place he called Zion.
(railroad whistle)
Narrator: Two thousand miles of steel, linking American East and American West…a transportation marvel of its time. Like most Americans of the time, Brigham Young viewed the building of a coast-to-coast railroad as a national turning point…Young was so confident that the railroad would change the face of the West, that he was one of the first investors in the project.
The transcontinental railroad was romantically viewed as binding the nation together after the carnage of the Civil War. More practically, it would help the nation tap the natural resources of the West…and rush people in to tame the frontier.
By 1867 the line started to come to life as a unique partnership between the federal government and two private companies. Under the Pacific Railroad Act the companies were put in direct competition. Every foot of track would mean money made and public land claimed by one company…and lost by the other.
In the West, the Central Pacific railroad company had slowly battled its way out of California and through the Sierra Nevada mountains. By the dawn of 1868, its largely Chinese work crews were making up for lost time, racing across Nevada and eyeing the settlements of the Utah territory three hundred miles in the distance. Their final stretch would cross the great western desert of Utah…an area that had been survived, but never truly mastered.
In the East, the Union Pacific railroad had burst out of Omaha, survived fierce Indian attacks, and moved quickly across Nebraska and Wyoming. By the start of 1868, the Union Pacific had laid far more track than the Central Pacific, and had captured much of the attention generated by the nation's railroad fever.
But as they neared the eastern border of the Utah territory, Union Pacific engineers were faced with the looming Wasatch mountain range. The Wasatch meant blasting expensive and time consuming tunnels…and grading a path for the rail lines through a series of canyons.
It was manpower the Union Pacific could not spare…time it did not have. Privately, company officers may have been aware it would require money that could not be paid. Neither company would back down from the race to complete the rail line. Too much was at stake.
At the dawn of 1868 each rail mile meant federal funds, and thousands of acres of federal land to be given to the completing railroad company. The railroad would virtually own the towns that were already springing up. It was an untapped mother lode of financial opportunity…but only if they kept laying rail.
The final push across the Utah territory of the transcontinental railroad was shaping up as a desperate race driven on both sides by greed, pride and power.
[Donald Strack] "I think they could see that Brigham Young and all of the people in Utah, because of their ties to the church, they needed an ally. There is no way that they could get the railroad built without the cooperation of the Mormons. It just would not have happened."
Narrator: Brigham Young and his Kingdom of God in the American West found themselves between two competing forces who would do anything to gain one mile at the other's expense. Young's vision for the future of the Utah territory would turn on his confident ability to out-maneuver the forces of American progress.
The Union Pacific was actively courting the Mormon church leader. By telegram, U.P. powerbroker Thomas Durant asked Young if he could convince Mormon men to leave their farms and build the railroad line for the Union Pacific through the Wasatch Mountains of northern Utah.
[Brigham Young] "April 22, 1868. There will be no difficulty in getting all the hands you want from one dollar to two dollars and fifty cents a day, according to their quality--Brigham Young."
Narrator: Without missing a beat, Thomas Durant upped the ante…offering to forge a direct contract with Brigham Young…
[Thomas Durant] "Are you disposed to take a contract for a portion or all of our grading between echo and Salt Lake? We propose to give you the preference on working near your settlements-- Thomas Durant, vice president."
Narrator: By cutting a deal with Young, Durant thought he could monopolize the Mormon workforce. If Brigham Young was the contractor, the prophet of the Mormon church would be doing the Union Pacific's bidding…And the Mormons would help the Union Pacific, not the Central Pacific.
A contract would give Young the purse strings for thousands of jobs-- extraordinary relief for his people suffering from the grasshopper plague, and work for hundreds of Mormon emigrants resettling in Utah.
Within hours of Durant's telegram…Brigham Young was on board with the Union Pacific: With a signature, the contract was closed in May of 1868. Almost immediately Brigham Young used his church position to call men to do his work on the railroad.
[Brigham Young] "To all bishops south of this city:
I wish you to send me all the help you possibly can, as quick as possible, to work on the railroad. If the teams which have lately come in with the immigration will go to work, I will employ them right away. The pay will be sure, and in money at liberal rates.--Brigham Young"
[David Haward Bain] ""And so it was done through a community and a church organization, and all of the farmers who really had absolutely nothing to do, at that point, because of the fact that they'd lost all their crops, just poured down from the hillsides to take advantage of this. Bringing their plows, bringing their teams of horses, and ready to show up for a good day's work."
