Always Pioneer Day on Antelope Island, a leftover from past
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Billowing dust like a row of covered wagons, vans and cars wound along a bumpy dirt road in a pioneer-like journey to observe Pioneer Day.
More than 5,000 people visited this island July 22 and 24 to have a taste of one of Utah's more authentic pioneer experiences. Antelope Island is an island mountain separated from the Wasatch Front by the Great Salt Lake. This isolation has preserved its pioneer buildings in a largely original condition, altered only by careful restoration by the state.This year, the state's celebration, usually held at This Is the Place State Park at the mouth of Emigration Canyon, was shifted to Antelope Island because of work to expand the park's town of Old Deseret for Utah's Centennial in 1996.
After crossing some 11 miles of unpaved road along the island, participants parked at the Garr Ranch house to find an expansive lawn shaded by old box elder trees. Here is where Brigham Young commissioned Fielding Garr to build ranch headquarters and manage the Church's tithing herd of cattle pastured on the island.
Since then, the ranch house has become the oldest building in Utah still resting on its original foundation, and the longest continually lived-in building in the state, from 1848-1980.
At the ranch quarters, children ate buffalo burgers, dipped candles, rolled hoops, had sack races, twisted rope, churned butter and made ice cream. They also explored. They visited the ranch house, peered in the cellar and spring house, and looked at the old corrals.
Some visitors listened to a historical presentation about the western pioneer trail system by historian Will Bagley, and took buckboard or covered wagon rides through the brush. Riding the bumpy trail on hard seats, they returned with new understanding about why pioneers often walked and walked.
A staff of eight volunteers hosted the visitors, said Ann Evans, park ranger. She said the ranch house is open to the public two weekends a month during the summer.
