Conclusion

This chapter shows how LDS officials and businessmen continuously found ways to bend railroads to their benefits or reshape Mormons institutions in order to flourish in their networks, such as the irrigation display at the Chicago World’s Fair. Regardless of the failure of the Bear River Irrigation company, it was proof of Mormon fortitude through cultural and locative righteousness. The company’s resources were reorganized by Mormon businessmen, and Mormons effectively promoted the LDS Church in other venues at World’s Fair. On the other hand, railroad barons’ contracts provided uninterrupted freighting, lucrative receipts of transcontinental tourism, and friendships with Mormon businessmen who intervened on their behalf in Congress. The results of their efforts were the combined naturalizing and mainlining of Mormonism, as tourists were convinced that they could learn from the Mormons to cultivate western lands and define religion in the modern west.

Tourists and the Making of an American Mainline

This chapter aims to trace railroad, tourist, and Mormon interactions beneath–and influencings of–the canopy of congressional law. It explores the recasting of federal anti-Mormon policies in light of railroading concerns and how Charles Francis Adams Jr.’s preface was a profound political act. Railroad literature played a role in mediating and marketing Utah religion and amplifying the genre of prerailroad tourism and guidebooks by focusing on the Mormons. The chapter also demonstrates how even while Congress attacked and, in time, forced concessions from the LDS Church with regard to polygamy and politics, Mormon material culture and geography were concurrently identified with Mormonism by railroads and capitalists if not also by congressmen.

Corinnethians and the Death Knell Thesis

This chapter analyzes the railroading promises of Corinne in light of contemporary religious theories and antipolygamy legislation. The death knell thesis is the belief that by modernizing Utah through trains, capitalism, and opening the West to free enterprise and liberal thought, Mormondom would be destroyed. The death knell thesis provides insight on the relationship between Mormonism and anti-Mormons as railroads economically and politically brought interests to Utah. J.H. Beadle hoped for the railroad hub to bring Christians, he and aimed to expose who he saw as Mormons’ barbarous theocracy, violence, and polygamy. Overall, Congress’s attack on the LDS Church and polygamy through religious legislation such as the Anti-Bigamy Act and the Pacific Railway Act contributed to the death knell thesis’s goal of destroying Mormonism.

Godbeites and the Capital of Dissent

This chapter discusses William S. Godbe’s background and role in leading the Godbeites. Godbeites imagined a Mormon state of prosperity consisting of interrelated social, economic, political, and ecclesiastical efforts. Opponents of Brigham Young’s policies, Godbeites argued for economic, spiritual, and political liberalisms, which earned them excommunication and helped formed Mormon orthodoxy. For example, Brigham Young opposed the opening of mines, Godbeites insisted that mining was a necessary and a religious issue. Although the Godbeites hoped to be in the favour of government and industrial support, the Cullom Bill contained several provisions specifically designed to reverse railroad era Mormon initiatives.

Steamboats and the Rise of Atrocity Tourism

This chapter covers J.H. Beadle’s guidebook escorted Gentiles on atrocity tours of Utah’s many Mormon hell-scapes and how Corinne’s steamboat industry dominated Utah’s Central business in freighting if not also tourism. With an anti-Mormon mindset, steamboats such as Kate Conner were built with the hope of transporting goods between the southern and northern parts of Utah. Beadle planned to capitalize on the market for anti-Mormon literature and lectures and focused on theory and politics of tourism. Beadle pointed tourists in the direction of Mormon atrocities, such as Mormon violence and plural marriages. However, benefitting from the steamboat boosted Corinnethians’ southern mining and lumber market and the western tourism trade.

Patrons and the Plays of Mormon Culture

This chapter delves into John Codman’s writings about his travel throughout Utah in 1873. Codman’s focus includes the Union Pacific, through which John W. Young managed Corrine’s bathing and boating trade and incorporated the growing network of Mormon leisure industries. Many of John W Young’s projects led Codman to explore the Tabernacle, which informed him about Mormon religious practices and marital systems, and investigate dramatic plays in the Salt Lake Theatre. Codman finishes his assessment on Corinne with a northern tour where he recognizes unity among Corinnethians due to the Indian scare and the anti-Indian program. Overall, Codman’s book, The Mormon Country, publicized Mormonism and played a role as a guided cultural mediator moderating between pro- and anti-Mormon claims, and promised that Utah would remain a special a site of rich cultural encounters, both on and off the railroad tracks.

Introduction

This chapter introduces the irony in Corinne, Utah, where anti-Mormon Christians planned to destroy Mormonism by exposing Mormondom’s polygamy, theorcracy, and church restrictions on Mormon-Gentile commerce; however, in return, Mormonism became a success in a modern bureaucratic world. Three basic narratives are assessed in this chapter: first, the shift from anti-Mormonism and the discourse of Mormon irreligion; second, the relationship between commerce and religious discourse; and third, the failures and ironies of promotions and institutional practices. Overall, Railroading Religion shows how Mormons established beneficial contracts with railroad companies and politicians, and it reveals the rise of religion as industry.

Brigham Young and the Railroad Connection

This chapter covers Brigham Young’s effort to aid and expedite the incorporation of railroads within Mormonism. A background of the Mormon land system, origins and precedents introduces the Plat of Zion devised by Joseph Smith as a model for future Mormon settlement, the elaboration of the priesthood system, and theodemocracy. Following Smith’s plan for a utopic plat, Young reshaped the modes and morphologies of Mormonism with his decision to expand the Plat of Zion to the Great Basin. Three factors increased Mormon interests in the Great Basin: established networks of exchange in the form of missions to area indigenous groups; the single-commodity extractive and manufacturing communities; and the permanent settlements designed for predominantly Mormon residence but diverse economic activity.