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Taylor Jade
Dr. Jenel Cope
American Civilizations 1700
21 November 2015
Here There Be Capitols
In Fillmore, Utah, resides the Utah Territorial Statehouse State Park Museum. The
building is an unfinished project of Truman O. Angell, with only the south wing being
completed. It was constructed with the areas natural red stone, and some of the stoneworkers
initials can still be seen, etched in the rough stones high above surveyors heads. When the state
capitol was moved to Salt Lake City, the statehouse began to fall into disrepair. It was restored in
1928, and dedicated as a state museum July 24, 1930, under the custodial care of the Daughters
of Utah Pioneers, or DUP. The building is now a museum with 3 floors, housing artifacts from
the 1800s onward, but the main exhibit is truly the statehouse itself, as the DUP intended.
The Daughters of Utah Pioneers is an exclusive group of women dedicated to preserving
historical Utah. They have no political or religious affiliation, preserving sites for educational
purposes and to honor the names and the achievements of Utahs founders. One memorable way
this was done was the very first hallway: frames upon frames of people and families with
nametags, some of the frames slightly overlapping each other, glinting gold and crowding the
entire hallway and into the last room. The DUP collects histories and presents what is given to
them, and in this way they are limited with what they can display. The exhibits themselves are
often organized in clusters of relevant stuff with no story easily discernible. Examples of this
include plate after plate made of china in one room, a faux bedroom as another, antique

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musical instruments in another, and the Governors room, with a glass case of multiple old,
ragged school books gathering dust, all with little description.
The museum itself, however, is a different story. It is clearly the main focus or
educational priority of the DUP. Information about the stoneworkers initials, monument
dedications, and the capitol building line the walkways, free to visitors. Stones pave the grass
where the building was meant to rest in all its glory. The museum building is the main feature of
the entire exhibit, and if you do choose to pay to see the inside exhibits, has rooms, guides, and
videos devoted to layering detail to the political and physical historical picture. The weight given
to just the building relies on political information to back it up, and anything social or
economical falls to the wayside. The museum was also the first object of the Daughters
intentions: the building needed to be restored and preserved to retain its educational purpose, and
the exhibits inside came later, through donations.
The most interesting, and therefore most effective, part of the museum was when the
guide introduced the Territorial Statehouse Museum. She gave the history behind it, illuminating
facts with stories of men traveling four days from Salt Lake City in the middle of snowy winter,
just to tell the men in Fillmore that the capitol would not be located there, and then make the
journey home. She introduced the idea of the State of Deseret, the original settlers absurd notion
of their state taking up one sixth of the country, land moving into the newly annexed state of
California! This information was memorable with questions easily answered, starting the
adventure into the museum in a good light. The second most effective aspect was the videos in
the empty assembly room on the third floor. They gave a huge amount of information in a
relatively short time, in an organized manner, and with pictorial content. In contrast, the displays
downstairs, with no tour guide and information in the form of tiny hand-written or typed scripts,

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or on huge displays with paragraph after paragraph to reador with nothing given at all!did
not invite any incentive to find out more of the history. Whats more, the exhibits seemed deeply
lacking after being accustomed to the rich background of the building, more insight to the truly
intended bigger picture.
Because the Daughters of Utah Pioneers are the custodians of the Utah Territorial
Statehouse Museum, the most important exhibit is the statehouse itself. It was preserved with
educational care and intent, provided with the most thorough, organized, and rich facts, and
presented immediately to those who are visiting without an interest in paying for the exhibits
inside. The content of the exhibits further illuminates the building as their focal point because of
the temporary status of some donations. If someone were to base their entire perception of
territorial Utahs history on this museum, the overall impression would be an extreme weight and
value to the building and its politics, with side stories to be painstakingly extracted here and
there from the general objects.