Brigham Young wanted the railroad badly, right up until it threatened to destroy the isolation that made Mormon Utah possible. This week, Lindsay Hansen Park and Bryan Buchanan dig into the chaotic arrival of the transcontinental railroad, where unpaid Mormon laborers, corporate brinkmanship, ZCMI boycotts, excommunications, Chinese railroad workers, and a very angry Brigham Young …
Tag: western expansion
Episode 167: Before They Were Famous: Orson Hyde
He dedicated Jerusalem for the return of the Jews, renamed Nevada’s oldest town, nearly became president of the LDS Church, and may have helped create one of Mormonism’s most enduring succession myths. This week, Lindsay Hansen Park and Bryan Buchanan trace the astonishing and contradictory life of Apostle Orson Hyde, from orphaned boy who walked …
Episode 164: Mormon Mail and the Pony Express
Before texts, tracking numbers, and two-day shipping, a letter could take months to cross the continent, assuming it arrived at all. In this episode, Lindsay and Bryan saddle up for the tangled story of Mormons, mail, freighting, and power in the American West, from Brigham Young’s ambitious Y.X. Company and the political chaos of the …