SLC's Pioneer Museum and the Daughters of Utah Pioneers: A Conversation with Megan Weiss (S5, E13)

**Brad Westwood** (0:03)
Welcome to the podcast, Speak Your Piece.
This is a podcast about Utah's history, produced by the Utah Dept. of Culture and Community Engagement. I'm Brad Westwood, Senior Public Historian. My job is to make the very best, the most interesting, and the most accessible history about Utah available to the widest audience. If there's one place, one podcast to get your Utah history fix, we really hope this is your place.
My guest today for this episode is Megan Weiss, who is completing her Ph.D. dissertation from the University of Utah in Western American History. Is that right?

**Megan Weiss** (0:41)
It's a US. History major, but my focus is the American West, yes.

**Brad Westwood** (0:46)
Well, hello, hello, Megan. Thank you so much for being here and being a guest on Speak Your Piece.
What are you doing now as far as your dissertation? As I understand, you've passed all your.

**Megan Weiss** (0:59)
So yes, I just passed my comprehensive exams last month, which is a huge deal in the Ph.D. process. Now that I've passed the exams, I get to prepare a prospectus for the dissertation. I know I want to talk about gender in the American West and memory and public history, so the creation of monuments and museums.
Probably, I'm going to focus on the Daughters of Utah Pioneers, is the plan.

**Brad Westwood** (1:23)
There's still a lot of ambiguity and development.

**Megan Weiss** (1:26)
Yeah, once I get the prospectus part done, I will have a little more of a direction, but it's coming together and it's almost, it's the fun part now of research.

**Brad Westwood** (1:35)
Well, we're very pleased to have Megan here. Megan is a well-known public historian and has worked for the American West Center at the University of Utah, Utah Humanities, Fort Douglas Military Museum, and where I became acquainted with her at the Utah Division of State History. Megan and I will be discussing a very interesting history of the Daughters of Utah Pioneers, legally known as the International Society of Daughters of Utah Pioneers. We will also be discussing the DUP Pioneer Memorial Museum, which is located on the top of Main Street in Salt Lake City, adjacent to the Utah State Capitol. The museum is actually located on state property and it's leased to the DUP. Not many people know that. There's a story behind that and Megan's going to tell it to us. We're also going to be taking some time to talk about the history, sort of a lost history of how many times Utah's tried to have a Utah history museum.
Our discussion today is based on Megan's graduate student work, with the working title, Keeping Utah's Attic in Good Order. Before the LDS Church purchased and closed the block east of Temple Square, between 1999 and 2000, everyone on Main Street, Salt Lake City's first commercial street, when they looked northward, they saw First Temple Square, slightly to the west, then the DUP Museum, and then if they continued their gaze upwards across the mountains, they saw Anson Peak. These prominent landmarks were really a big deal, and so far as the museum, it was the Vista's End on Main Street.
This museum was opened in 1950, and was symbolically designed to be a replica of the famous Salt Lake Theatre, which Mormon Society's deepest but delayed regret was that it was torn down in 1928
Even the interior, with its multiple horseshoe balconies looked down, were meant to imitate the grand old Pioneer Theatre. We'll be discussing the remarkable history of the DUP, its venerable headquarters, and a hundred plus companies, and a thousand camps, and all that's all part of the culture and world of the DUP. So with that, Megan, let's talk about this museum of Utah.

**Megan Weiss** (4:03)
Well, it definitely all started with the famous 1897 Pioneer Jubilee, which you know very well because it was the beginning of the Utah State Historical Society.

**Brad Westwood** (4:13)
Absolutely.

**Megan Weiss** (4:13)
Yeah, so this was kind of a watershed moment for Utah history. Mormons arrived in 1847, Utah achieved statehood in 1896
And in my opinion, the 1897 Jubilee was kind of this reset moment for Utah culture where they're figuring out, you know, we're Americans now. How do we prove our Americanness while still preserving what makes Utah unique? And that's when, you know, Utah culture really clung to the pioneer narrative.
Everything became about preserving that pioneer narrative. So you get the Book of Pioneers, the Days of 47, the Pioneer Day Parade, all of these traditions that are very near and dear to Utah's hearts today, kind of started with that original festival.

**Brad Westwood** (5:01)