University of the Pacific Scholarly Commons University Libraries Librarian and Staff Books and University Libraries Book Chapters 1993 Brigham Young and the Environment Michael J. Wurtz University of the Pacific, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/libraries-books Part of the Library and Information Science Commons Recommended Citation Wurtz, M. J. (1993). Brigham Young and the Environment. In Gregory McNamee (Eds.), The Battle for the West: Arizona and Land Ethics: A Reader. Phoenix, AZ: Arizona Humanities Council https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/libraries-books/25 This Contribution to Book is brought to you for free and open access by the University Libraries at Scholarly Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in University Libraries Librarian and Staff Books and Book Chapters by an authorized administrator of Scholarly Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. ARIZONA HUMANITIES COUNCIL THE BATTLE FOR THE WEST: ARIZONA AND LAND ETHICS A Reader THE BATTLE FOR THE WEST: ARIZONA AND LAND ETHICS A Reader Editor Gregory McNamee Editorial Committee Peter Barbey Vicky Hay Charles Redman Dan Shilling Laura Stone Artwork Reuben Munoz ©Arizona Humanities Council, 1993 Arizona Humanities Council The Ellis-Shackelford House 1242 North Central Avenue Phoenix, AZ 85004 602/257-0335 rrI 1- [ i TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction ................................................................................................................................... 1 Gregory McNamee PART I: THE SECOND OPENING OF THE WEST Hohokam Irrigation History ....................................................................................................... 4 David E. Doyel Hispanic Water Law: Individual Rights and the Common Good ......................................... 7 Michael C. Meyer John Wesley Powell and the Changing Arizona Environment ............................................ 10 Peter Wild California, William Mulholland, Water Wars, and Lessons for Arizona ........................... 13 Gregory McNamee Creating an Urban Form in the Salt River Valley .................................................................. 16 Michael Duchemin A Century of Western Public Lands Legislation .................................................................... 19 Michael McCarthy PART II: IDEAS OF NATURE Arizona Land Ethics ................................................................................................................... 22 Max Oelschlaeger Traditional Teachings Guide Native American Life .............................................................. 25 Marley Shebala John Muir and Gifford Pinchot ................................................................................................. 27 George Lubick Brigham Young and the Environment ..................................................................................... 30 Michael Wurtz Mary Austin and Women's Views of the Western Landscape ............................................ 33 Vera Norwood Aldo Leopold and Asian Philosophy ....................................................................................... 36 NinaMohit PART III: CONTEMPORARY APPLICATIONS Environmental Ethics: What's the Point .................................................................................. 40 Ann S. Causey Teaching an Environmental Ethic ............................................................................................ 43 Paul McD. Rowland The Environment and Arizona Politics ................................................................................... 46 Zachary A. Smith Land Values and the Law .......................................................................................................... 49 Robert Glennon Evaluation Form .......................................................................................................................... 53 would be the only way to .salvation and the settlement of the West. BRIGHAM YOUNG Young was born in Vermont in ' i, 1801 to a sick mother and a father who preferred to teach lessons with AND THE a "word and a blow ... but the blow came first." Both parents insisted that the children read the Bible and ENVIRONMENT live under strict rules. The family moved to New York when Brigham was three years old, and there they lived on the edge of poverty, Micha-el Wurtz working mostly for neighboring farmers. Shortly after his mother's death in 1815, Brigham was sent out on his own and began working as an apprentice in the construction trade. righam Young was a product of the In 1824, employed as a carpenter, frontier. Moving from the forests of painter and cabinetmaker, Young early nineteenth-century New married Miriam Works. Miriam England to the semi-arid desert of gave birth to two children before she B the Great Basin, he created his own died in 1832, shortly after Brigham rules based on pragmatism, which, had been baptized into the Church combined with the Mormon of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter­ Brigham Young had been Day Saints) faith, molded a man of careful about choosing a religion. great self-confidence. He once said, Perhaps this was due to growing up "The revelations I receive are all in a region later to be recognized as . , upon natural principals." Young the "Burned-Over District," where used those revelations to build the many new religions were routinely Kingdom of God in the mountains founded. He had once felt that he of the West. should "Wait awhile! [Until] I reach Starting with the foundation of the years of judgment and discretion Salt Lake City, he instructed his [and] I can judge for myself." Until faithful in coping with the inhospi­ then he resolved to "take no course table environment. From there he either with one party or the other." widened the Mormon domain to In 1830 he began reading the Book of include the whole of what is now Mormon, and in it he found some­ Utah as well as parts of Nevada, thing that appealed to both his sense California, Arizona, and Idaho. In of puritanism and practicality. thirty years, Young turned Salt Lake After his wife died, Young City from an isolated frontier town traveled to Kirtland, Ohio, to meet to a religious capital. To exist under Joseph Smith, the prophet who Michael Wurtz is an archivist at conditions that inspired explorer Jim founded the church after he pro­ Sharlot Hall Museum in Prescott. He Bridger to bet a thousand dollars fessed to have translated the words received his master's degree from that the Mormons could not raise of the angel Moroni. Moroni tells Northern Arizona University. Mr. one bushel of corn, Young created the story of refugees from Jerusalem Wurtz is portraying Brigham Young for who came to America in 600 b.c. and the chautauqua program that is part of new policies concerning land and had been visited by Christ, who The Second Opening of the West: water, supported by followers who Ideas of Nature in Arizona project. realized that faith and hard work established his church on this 30 continent. These refugees had been he felt "it was a sin to waste life and fighting each other on and off until flesh," and because they might need the Lamanites, whom Mormons the food later. His beliefs were well consider to be the ancestors of the suited to the harsh realities of American Indians, won by annihilat­ traveling across the Great Plains. ing the Nephites, to whom Moroni On July 24, 1847, Young pro­ belonged. In 1823 the angel Moroni, claimed: "This is the place," when said Smith, guided him to the gold he first looked down upon the Salt plates on which the angel had Lake Valley. Here he was going to written this history. Seven years "build the Kingdom of God on later the Book of Monnon was pub­ Earth." Young promised, "God ... lished. will temper the elements for the Between 1832 and 1844, Young good of His Saints; he will rebuke moved up through the church the frost, and the sterility of the soil, hierarchy. Early on, Smith asked and the land shall become fruitful." him to take the word of God to the But to earn God's assistance, he people, and Young spent much of continued, the saints must work this time traveling throughout hard so that the desert would North America and England on "blossom as the rose." Young promised, mission work. In 1840, Young Orson Pratt, a point man for succeeded to the presidency of the Young, heeded this advice and had "God will temper the Quorum of the Twelve, making him already begun fulfilling that destiny elements for the good one of the most powerful men of the by turning the waters of City Creek, church. Among his tasks he was to near what was going to become Salt of His Saints; he will help settle new saints coming to Lake City, onto the baked earth a Nauvoo, Illinois-his first brush day before Young had even seen the rebuke the frost, and with what was going to be a lifelong site of his future oasis in the Great the sterility of the soil, endeavor. Basin. By late afternoon Pratt's men During these years the Mor­ had planted their first crops. But, as and the land shall mons were constantly attacked by Leonard Arrington points out in become fruitful." "gentile" populations in Ohio, Great Basin Kingdom, farming "was Missouri, and Illinois, who feared more than an economic necessity, it the unusual customs of Mormonism, was a form of worship." especially the practice of polygamy. The strength of religious convic­ When Joseph Smith was murdered tion, the lack of gentile