Growing Up Mormon in the Outland The Mormons gathered in the nineteenth century and dispersed in the twentieth, spilling over the mountains to the west coast and elsewhere. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints then launched an effort to transport Mormon culture whole to distant members. This culture bloomed in the 1940s and 50s, gradually receding as church resources were concentrated outside the established stakes and the family was newly emphasized. This paper will be a fond memoir of the days when members trooped to the ward house almost daily for activities and fellowship, before the church retreated from the effort to fill all the needs of the members. The Church was then the place to learn elocution, part-singing, and the tango, a place of extravagant events. As the generations that provided that culture and benefitted from it move on, I want to appreciate those days when “The Glory of God is Intelligence” was interpreted in the widest possible way.

Claudia L. Bushman