This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2017, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Die-hard parade fans willing to camp out overnight on Sunday will enjoy front-row seats to the annual Days of '47 Parade.
But clever fans skipped the sweaty crowds and viewed the colorful floats up close and personal Tuesday and Wednesday at the South Towne Expo center. The ingenuity of spinning nursery rhymes and larger-than-life dragons and sea animals filled the convention hall as families strolled around enjoying warm, roasted almonds and handfuls of Salt Lake taffy. Utah was in full display with excessive tissue paper, balloon animals and Winder Farms strawberry lemonade.
The Days of '47 festivities, of course, commemorate the arrival of the first 148 pioneers into the Salt Lake Valley in 1847. Members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints sought "a place on this earth that nobody else want[ed]." They found the arid desert of the Salt Lake Valley, and they made it bloom.
Seeking religious freedom, Mormons trekked to Utah in response to persecution church members experienced in Missouri and Illinois. They endured cholera and childbirth, broken wagons and deaths of family members as they walked under the hot sun day after day after day.
You don't have to believe in the Mormon faith to admire the tenacity and industriousness of a people who crossed the plains and built up a beautiful city in the Western mountains.
Martha Hughes Cannon was one of these trekking pioneers. Born in Wales, she walked across the prairie as a young girl, suffering the death of her baby sister along the trail, and her father shortly after arriving in Salt Lake City. At 16 she started college at the University of Deseret, and later attended the University of Michigan to earn a medical degree. She was the fourth wife of Angus M. Cannon, and was an untiring advocate for women's rights and a fearless crusader for women's suffrage. In 1896 Cannon was the first woman in the United States elected as a state senator. She was a Democrat, and beat out Republicans Emmeline B. Wells, a well-known suffragist, and her own husband.
In addition to her roles as doctor and senator, Cannon was a mother to three children, and remains the embodiment of faithful, tenacious Utah pioneers. She famously said, "You give me a woman who thinks about something besides cook stoves and wash tubs and baby flannels, and I'll show you, nine times out of ten, a successful mother."
Pioneers like Martha Hughes Cannon form the foundation of Utah's rich and successful heritage.