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The campaign last week that scuttled a scheme to build an office building in This Is the Place Heritage Park may have earned its own place in Utah history - call it Triumph of the Nerds.
Over a period of weeks, a determined group of pioneer re-enactors, antiquarians, history buffs, botany aficionados and other eccentrics, who love the park in Emigration Canyon with an exceptional fervor, found the grit to stand up to one of Utah's ultimate political insiders - developer Ellis Ivory.
To everyone's shock - including their own - the nerds won.
They, of course, are nerds only to cynics who might be perplexed to hear words like "sacred" used to describe the rugged hillside park that has become the center of a political controversy. But it's difficult to label these passionate amateurs and retired professionals, who have made themselves experts in arcane subjects ranging from 19th-century antiques to pioneer life to a rare oak hybrid that has found sanctuary in the park.
In the end, not even Ivory could stand up to the righteous indignation of people like Christine Graham, a pioneer re-enactor who endured the 1997 sesquicentennial wagon train that ended its journey at the park.
"We have watched with increasingly heavy hearts as park management weighed itself down with inappropriate and unsustainable development," she said with tears in her eyes. "Probably because it lacks expertise, the park tends to choose pricey 21st-century solutions when 19th century solutions that would be much less expensive, far more appropriate, and more satisfying to visitors."
She and other re-enactors told the park board they are no longer welcome at the village they helped inspire.
Nor could Ivory ignore Chuck Wullstein, a University of Utah professor emeritus who has been watching over a handful of hybrid scrub oaks near the park's Mary Fielding Smith House that have managed to survive 4,000 years of climate change. The heritage park offers the 5,000-foot optimal elevation and a shallow water table necessary to rare oak hybrids.
"This uniqueness of nature should be recognized as a state treasure deserving of preservation and protection into perpetuity," Wullstein said.
With the unthinkable office building out of the way, their campaign to return the park to more public control heads into more difficult political terrain. They want a full accounting of the foundation's activities. So far, the only politicians on board are state Reps. Ralph Becker and Roz McGee, who say they will push for an audit of the foundation. But they are, of course, Democrats, who are, like the park lovers, political outsiders.
A troubled place
The latest chapter in the park's history began a year ago, when Republican legislative leaders asked land-development millionaire Ivory, who has been eager to prove his political mettle, to reorganize the foundation and save the park from financial doom.
When the park, which celebrates Mormon pioneers' entry into the Salt Lake Valley in 1847, reached the point of collapse in early 2006, the all-LDS Republican legislative leadership bypassed public debate and committee discussions to slip a $2 million bailout into the budget.
In exchange, they called on Ivory to get it functioning at least semi-independently of public money. The park gets $800,000 annually in state funds and $50,000 last year in county ZAP taxes.
Ivory was faced with a "living history" village that had grown from a dozen structures to 46 historic reconstructions and restored 19th century buildings, including one of Brigham Young's homes.
The first Foundation board had talked Utah families into contributing historic buildings, along with $2 million in furniture and artifacts (one rocking chair in the park is valued at $50,000).
But the early promoters of the park, including former foundation Chairman Stephen Studdert, failed to establish a park endowment that would maintain its treasures and staff the buildings. More than one politician involved has used the word "white elephant" to describe the resulting financial mess.
Worse, few Utahns seem to want to visit the sprawling park, which requires a hike in the foothills at the mouth of Emigration Canyon. While 300,000 people visit the nearby This Is the Place Monument every year, only about 35,000 buy a ticket to the adjacent heritage village. A big reason is that the foundation financially has been unable to keep more than a dozen of its 46 buildings open.
"With so many buildings closed, people felt like they weren't getting their money's worth," explains park director Matt Dahl. This year 42 buildings will be open and visitors will be hauled to them in mini-trains, Dahl says. (The train cars will carry advertising, including one sponsored by The Salt Lake Tribune.)
Ivory's response to the revenue shortfall was business-based: commercial development. He pushed an idea to lease 12 acres of the park for a three-story office building and parking lot. He also envisioned a conference center, which would be rented out for events, reunions and weddings.
The public outcry against such development forced the events center off the table in a few months, but Ivory pushed forward with his land-lease concept, which he calculated would earn the park $400,000 a year. Working through University of Utah President Michael Young, Ellis got ARUP Laboratories to sign on.
All that was left to be done was win approval from the state Parks and Recreation Board, which technically still controls the land. That approval seemed greased up until last week when the nerds charged.
Kenyon Kennard, a former curator at the park who resigned when he saw the "carnivalesque" direction Ivory was taking the park, launched a petition campaign. The east bench community councils united in protest and some residents warned of a lawsuit because the federal government had ceded the land to the state on the condition it would remain a public park.
The turning point came early this month when Jazz owner Larry Miller told The Salt Lake Tribune that he did not like Ellis' idea or the direction of the park. "They crossed a line to say, 'We are going to sell our future to save our present.' "
Besides Miller's political and business connections, he had earned the right to criticize the park when he funded a $500,000 reproduction of a turn-of-the-century Salt Lake City fireman's social hall and even helped Ivory make his first payroll at the park.
You know this guy
Last week, Miller told the foundation now that the land-lease scheme is dead, he supports Ivory. With Miller's help, Ivory has begun "nailing down" the support that has been offered the park to fill the void left by the failed lease. Ivory foresees a combination of private contributions and attendance taking up some of the slack. But Ivory acknowledges he will ask the state for another $400,000 annual funding for building maintenance, along with as much county and city tax money as he can get. "I've gotten good at begging," he told the parks board.
Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. said Friday that he will support Ivory's request "in a limited fashion for a limited period of time" as long as the city, county and businesses also ante up. " I wouldn't want to cover all of it."
Already Ivory has secured additional support from the LDS Church, a park donor, with a promise of providing a part-time curator.
The antiquarian take
Kennard, who curated the $1.5 million in artifacts in Miller's fireman's museum, has already come up with a list of experts to review the park's mission that includes Jonathan L. Fairbanks, son and grandson of renowned Utah artists and a park patron. Fairbanks is a former curator of American Decorative Arts and Sculpture at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Foundation supporters argue that the park is so unique outsiders would not offer much help. Besides, a study would be expensive.
Ivory says he has had two Philadelphia-based consultants evaluate the park's needs. Their advice led him to bring in rubber-tired trains and build more bathrooms. But, as with most foundation information, he declines to share the consultants' report, to the frustration of the community councils' call for openness. But the cause of openness may be aided by the state Parks Board's call for a "white paper" outlining the park's history and future.
Don't count the nerds out yet. Though Miller doesn't quite understand Kennard's fervor, he respects him. "One time I called Kenyon a historian," Miller remembers. "He said, 'Don't call me a "historian" - I'm a antiquarian!' He's a piece of work but he really cares about the park."
And Miller says he would like to see the park's mission re-evaluated by a team that includes living history professionals.
"Sure, that'll cost money," Miller says. "But just going out and trying experiments that fail costs even more money."