Posted on 09/11/2011 10:15:02 PM PDT by SmithL
The southern Utah site of a wagon train massacre was dedicated Sunday as a national historic landmark 154 years to the day after the tragedy occurred.
About 350 people watched as Zion National Park Superintendent Jock Whitworth presented plaques to mark the Mountain Meadows Massacre Historic Site 30 miles north of St. George.
The 760-acre site is where 120 members of an Arkansas wagon train were shot and killed by a Mormon militia on Sept. 11, 1857. The Baker-Fancher wagon train stopped in the meadows on its way to California when it was attacked.
Government officials, church leaders and descendants of the pioneers spoke at the dedication ceremony, which took place under sunny skies two months after the U.S. Interior Department upgraded the site's status to a historic landmark.
Whitworth hailed the designation, saying it represents a "reconciliation" among different groups involved. Historic landmarks have "exceptional value and quality" in teaching Americans about their past, he added.
"Each national historic landmark is an indispensable chapter in our national story," he told the crowd. "They include the shining episodes, but they also include the darkest and most difficult, even the one that occurred here 154 years ago today."
The presidents of the Mountain Meadows Monument Foundation, Mountain Meadows Association and Mountain Meadows Massacre Descendants led a prayer and then read the names of each victim and survivor of the wagon train.
The descendant organizations worked for nearly a decade to elevate the meadows to historic landmark status. In 2008, the Mormon church, whose leaders in the past had downplayed the faith's role in the massacre, took the lead in pushing for the landmark designation, filing the application with the parks service.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
For one thing, mimes.
What?
I couldn’t hear you....
Could you get with Shields and Yarnell and maybe tap your message in morse code, on some air glass?
What passed for entertainment in the 70s still blows my mind.
I know!
I use to watch their show! LOL
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