For the past several years, I have lived in a place with Mount Timpanogos practically in my backyard and a great view of Utah Lake close by. I have been aware of some of the recent history of American Fork and Provo canyons and Utah Lake as well as the folklore told about Timpanogos Cave. However, like most people in Utah Valley, I have been unaware of where these places really fit in history. This book was written to inform us of the forgotten history – that Utah Lake was once the dominant feature that this valley was known for, and that Mount Timpanogos (often referred to locally as “Timp”) is actually a very recent landmark. The book is made up of a long introduction, which gives a good summary of the entire book, followed by three parts that tell different aspects of the same story.

In the first part, the book tells about the Indians that inhabited the valley (not the mountains) and depended on the lake and rivers for trout and other food fish. When the Mormon pioneers came, they coexisted with the Indians in both the Salt Lake and Utah valleys for a time, sharing the hot and warm springs near the Great Salt Lake as well as the fishing places at and near Utah Lake. At that time, the mountains to the east were simply that – “the mountains.” The Indians were eventually forced out to reservations, and the settlers continued using Utah Lake until the 20th century when it was polluted and forgotten, except as a shallow lake mostly populated with trash fish, and the site of Geneva Steel.

Part two explains that as the lake vanished from prominence, Mount Timpanogos was turned into a landmark in the 1910s and 20s in a campaign spearheaded by a BYU faculty member, Eugene Roberts, who led hikes to the top and made up the legend of the Indian princess that is still retold to visitors of Timpanogos Cave. The book goes into great detail about how the hike became an institutionalized yearly event which was repeated into the 1960s before being discontinued, although individuals and smaller groups still continue to make it today. It also traces the history of hiking from Europe to the United States to fit the Timp hike into context, as well as giving a brief history of places such as Sundance, Mutual Dell, Aspen Grove, and Timpanogos Cave.

The third part discusses the history of naming places throughout the United States in memory of the original inhabitants, often creating legends to go along with them. It shows that what has happened in Utah is similar to what has happened in the rest of the country – as the Native Americans were forced out of the land, Indian-sounding names and legends were created to commemorate them, so that what we tend to know about them was largely fabricated. Ironically, some of these legends have now been picked up and retold by Indians living today as authentic - including the one that is retold about Timpanogos Cave, even though the particular formation mentioned is in a part of the cave that was not accessible until a passage was made between the original two caves.

I found most of the book to be very interesting, although parts of it were very tedious to get through. In putting everything in perspective in history, it seemed as if the author was continually going off on tangents, although I’m sure others may find these parts more interesting than I did (there were over 45 pages devoted entirely to “Lover’s Leaps,” for instance). I also found that a dictionary was often a handy accessory.

The author tends to write very long paragraphs with a single footnote at the end, so it is difficult to pin down many of the sources, and for some of the material which should have had sources cited, there were none. Near the beginning of the notes the author states that many secondary sources regarding LDS history aren’t cited because there is a great bibliography available for them, but it would have been much more helpful to not leave the reader wondering where some of the information came from.

The history of the LDS Church is recited in varying degrees of detail from its founding to the settlement of Utah, dealings with the Indians (although they were considered to be descendants of the Lamanites, there was limited success in coexisting peacefully), and then up through the present day in relationship with the subject of the book. However, there are some dubious claims made, some exaggerations, and some things that are arguably untrue. In some cases this is a result of using questionable theories from secondary sources and stating them as facts.

For instance, it is stated that "A reluctant pragmatist, Woodruff meant his 1890 edict (popularly known as the Manifesto) to be a delaying tactic. On the basis of a revelation given to Joseph Smith, many Mormons expected the Millennium to begin in 1891." While there is evidence that some members expected the Second Coming to happen at about that time, due largely to a revelation given to Joseph Smith that is contained in Doctrine and Covenants section 130 (at the end of which Joseph notes that he’s unsure of the actual meaning), it seems unlikely that the Manifesto would have even been issued if Wilford Woodruff expected it to be that imminent.

Another example is the statement that “In 1981 the Church quietly revised the Book of Mormon passage relating to the promise of the Lamanites: they would become ‘pure and delightsome’ instead of ‘white and delightsome.’” The implication is that the text was changed to try to make the Book of Mormon less racist. This change was actually made in the 1840 edition of the Book of Mormon, but was then forgotten (because later editions were based on the 1837 edition) until it was restored in the 1981 edition, where it is noted that "Some minor errors in the text have been perpetuated in past editions of the Book of Mormon. This edition contains corrections that seem appropriate to bring the material into conformity with prepublication manuscripts and early editions edited by the Prophet Joseph Smith." It’s doubtful that Joseph Smith had racism in mind when the change was made or other similar verses would have been changed as well.

To Farmer’s credit, when he discusses the recent studies that show no relationship between the DNA of “contemporary native peoples of Israel and the Palestinian territories and of contemporary native peoples of the Americas,” he states that it’s possible that the Lamanites were absorbed by other population groups, and that “The science of historical genetics is young; the evidence is sure to change.” However, in the footnotes he only cites the works of those that claim the DNA issue to be problematic.

For anyone interested in the history of Utah, the West, Native Americans, place names, hiking, environmentalism, or any of the other topics covered, there should be something of interest in this book. Even the casual reader can read the parts of the book they find to be of most interest and learn some of the history that has largely been forgotten. It seems that the author has met his goal in writing it – I have a new appreciation for and a renewed interest in the landmarks that make up my surroundings, both the lake and the mountain. ( )

This book deals with two Utah landmarks, Utah Lake and Mount Timpanogos, and the role they’ve played in the heritage of Latter-day Saints and Indians. The author, Jared Farmer, is an academic historian who was raised in an LDS home within view of these two landmarks. I found this book quite interesting and have given it a relatively high rating. The book is influenced by theory but not ruined by it. Despite being a non-believer, Farmer touches on but does not belabor the LDS Church’s traditional vulnerabilities. Nevertheless, in this book he has cast himself in the role of a debunker, which triggers in me the desire to play the role of contrarian’s contrarian in this review. Some comments:

1) “Arriving in the eastern Great Basin around 1200, [Numic-speaking people] replaced, displaced, or absorbed the ancient people now called the Fremont Culture.” (p. 23) For a book that takes a frank look at the injurious effect of Mormon immigration on Utah Native Americans, that’s a rather euphemistic way to describe an apparently similar event.

2) “[Brigham Young] could have set up camp in western Iowa, but the Mormon persecution complex propelled him across the Missouri River to unorganized territory.” (p. 59) “Persecution complex” is a rather insensitive way of putting it.

3) Farmer uses the terms “Lamanism” (p. 81) and “Zionism” (p. 157) in a way contrary to the standard definitions and without telling us what his new definitions are.

4) “Mormons reimagined Utah’s land of lakes as a desert. . .” (p. 105) Utah is the 2nd driest state in the Union. For example, the state’s average annual precipitation is only 25% of the average precipitation of the Midwestern town in which I was raised. The area around Utah Lake gets slightly more precipitation than the state average, but not enough that much “imagination” is required to view it as a desert.

5) “[Washear] filled the American role of the Bloodthirsty Savage.” (p. 131) Did the pioneers really have to look very hard to find someone to fill that role? Back on page 85, Farmer relates an episode in which an Indian named Arapene “dashed [a] child’s brains out” when no one was willing to pay a high enough price to purchase the child as a slave.

6) “. . . federal surveyors assigned elevations to western summits, thereby creating an imagined geography based on altitude.” (p. 141) Once again, Farmer seems to think it takes imagination to deal with cold, hard facts. On the next page, he oddly links this to “the cult of measurement”.

7) There are some distracting repetitions in the book, as if Farmer originally wrote the chapters as separate documents. Four times (on pp. 48-9, p. 108, pp. 162-3, and p. 236), he presents the geographical comparison between the Wasatch Front and the Holy Land as if for the first time. On pages 180, 326, and 330, we are told that Eugene Roberts was born in 1880. Other things Farmer tells us more than once include the fact that Timpview was the second high school in Provo, the fact that Zebulon Pike failed to make a first ascent of Pikes Peak, and the fact that William Cullen Bryant wrote a lovers leap poem.

8) Farmer argues for the credentials of Mount Nebo as a genuine “mount” deserving of more attention from Utah Valley residents than Mount Timpanogos. He is evidently using some unexplained technical definition of a mount as an isolated, conical mountain, thus disqualifying Timp because it is topped by a summit ridge. Well, Nebo is also topped by a summit ridge, and as I measure these two ridges (at the 10,000 foot elevation), Nebo’s (7 miles) is longer than Timp’s (6 miles)! Farmer says that Nebo is more prominent when one crosses from Salt Lake Valley to Utah Valley at Point of the Mountain. One problem with this assertion is that Nebo itself is largely hidden behind the lower peaks immediately to its north (North Peak, Bald Mountain, and Dry Mountain). A second problem is that the Angle of View occupied by the Nebo massif at Point of the Mountain is much smaller than that occupied by the Timp massif. (This is easily confirmed with Google Street View.)

9) “Latter-day Saints saw mountains even where they didn’t exist: desert settlers always referred to a nearby high plateau or big mesa as ‘the mountain’.” (p. 154) Again, Farmer has an idiosyncratically narrow view of what is a genuine mountain. I guess the Pine Valley laccolith that looms 7500 feet over St. George is not really a mountain. And the skiers schussing down the slopes of Brian Head are skiing on something other than a mountain.

10) “The prophetic Ensign Peak became a patriotic landmark beginning in July 1897. . .” I think Farmer is 50 years too late here. There are at least two eyewitnesses (1847 pioneer Harrison Sperry and Mormon Battalion veteran John P. Wriston) who recorded seeing an American flag flying from Ensign Peak in 1847.

11) “In a 1909 report the U.S. Geological Survey lumped [the ‘Timpanogos Glacier’] with other ‘extinct glaciers’ of the Wasatch.” (p. 192) Well, a current FAQ on the USGS website says: “Reputedly, Utah's Timpanogos Glacier is now a rock glacier (in which the ice is hidden by rocks).” And it’s not hard to find fairly recent news stories of people being injured or killed by falling into “crevasses” in Timp’s “non-glacier”.

12) “[Robert] Redford romanced the Northern Rockies in Montana. . . Who wouldn’t want a home—or a second or a third home—here? Western Montana looks green and empty and white . . . whereas southern California looks brown and congested and brown. . .” (p. 219) I'm not in the habit of defending Robert Redford, but it sounds like Farmer is accusing him of racism with no evidence to back up the accusation.

13) “[Zion’s] Great White Throne [has] a place-name that [evokes] a more up-to-date racialism.” (p. 324) It is an objective fact that the Great White Throne is great and white. It was named after Revelation 20:11. I guess that makes John the Revelator John the Racialist!

14) “Without a degree or a husband, [Alice C.] Fletcher rose through the ranks of women’s clubs to become a fellow at Harvard’s Peabody Museum.” (p. 340) How odd (and mildly offensive) to bring up Fletcher’s marital status, which has no discernible relevance to the story Farmer is telling. ( )