Utah history

WEST POINT — On the 143rd anniversary of the “Wedding of the Rails,” when the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroads joined at Promontory Summit, students at West Point Elementary School created their own mock wedding to celebrate the event.

Fourth-graders in Krista Harrah’s class on Thursday donned cardboard boxes decorated to look like train cars and formed two trains — Union Pacific’s engine No. 119 and Central Pacific’s Jupiter.

Their classroom was converted to a wedding hall, complete with white ribbons and wedding cake.

OGDEN -- Union Station's railroad museum has railroad watches, lanterns, signs, bells and whistles in profusion.

But an Indian war bonnet from Little Big Horn? Tombstones? A shoe repair outfit?

Richard Couturier spent 13 years cataloging Union Station's very full basement, so little surprises him -- but even he shook his head at the war bonnet.

I claim a few permanent results of my efforts as a columnist, and the tower clock in the Box Elder County Courthouse is one of the grandest.

My very first column, ever, in 1995, described the rediscovery of that old clock. It was forgotten and covered in bird dung for decades. My column sparked a community effort to refurbish and repair the clock, which now ticks in burnished brass splendor, tucked behind the elevator in the courthouse lobby. One of my stories describing the clock’s discovery permanently hangs beside it.

It was fun to help preserve a bit of Brigham City’s past, although the city does a pretty good job on its own.

OGDEN -- The Ogden Family History Center will host a talk on "History of Nauvoo 1840s, the Mormon Battalion and Settlement of the Great Basin" at 10 a.m. Saturday at the center, 539 24th St.

The keynote speaker will be Dr. Richard Sadler, professor of history at Weber State University and co-author of "Ogden, Junction City" and other works. His talk is free.

Following the talk, two workshops will be held, one on finding your ancestors who lived in Nauvoo and another on the Mormon Battalion's help in settling the Ogden area.

OGDEN — Poodles were wearing buckskin at Saturday’s Easter Rendezvous, and if you weren’t sure where buckskin came from, you could watch some guy scrape guts from the inside of the hide of a freshly killed deer.

Children watching that said, “EEW!”

But Fort Buenaventura was full of much else to please the ear or eye: a banjo’s strum, white Indian lodges reflected against the lake, the jangle of beads and bells on an intricately decorated Indian dress, some guy wearing a top hat and breechcloth and nothing else, the “whack!” of an ax hitting wood.

LAYTON — Native American rock art will be the topic at the Sons of Utah Pioneers meeting Tuesday.

The meeting will be at 6:30 p.m. at the Davis County Library Central Branch auditorium, 155 N. Wasatch Drive.

The speaker will be Laurel Casjens, former specialist with the Utah Office of Museum Services, said Stephen G. Handy, spokesman for the Snow Horse Chapter of the Sons of Utah Pioneers.

Casjens received her PhD from Harvard University and has extensive experience in Native American culture and art, Handy said.

The 3,000 students at the National Conference on Undergraduate Research at Weber State University have studied everything they need to know to run the world when they take over, and that’s good.

Judging by the results, the current operators — that’s us — are working blind.