Cultural Environmentalism and the Wasatch Mountains

From the time of Albert Bierstadt to the present, the Wasatch Mountain Range of the American West persists as subject matter for painters. To explore how the Wasatch Mountain environment shaped culture, in this paper I will examine two carefully selected artifacts.  The first is an untitled mural by painter Lorus Pratt (1913) located in a grand neoclassical building in downtown Salt Lake City, originally the home of the Farmers & Stock Growers Cooperative Bank.   This mural enshrines the myth of Jeffersonian agrarianism with farmers toiling in their fields with water streaming down from the mountains in the background. The second is the huge granite monument Mahonri Young sculpted from granite mined in the Wasatch Mountains in 1947.  Known as "This Is the Place" monument, it rests at the foot of the Wasatch Range in Salt Lake City.  This massive shrine to Utah’s founders was created at a turning point in time--the transition of Wasatch Mountains from a site of silver mining to the home of the ski tourism industry. These two artifacts stand as symbols of the importance of the Wasatch Mountains to the Utah’s rich culture of agriculture, mining, and tourism. The larger project of which this is a part can illuminate how Americans are dependent on environment to represent their culture, and how culture is informed by environment.