"The Place" is not The Place for all Utahns.

And until it is, board Chairman Ellis Ivory will have to come up with marginal ideas for making money and, when those fail, beg for more state funding.

This Is The Place's struggles have been blamed on early managers who expanded too fast - only 12 of 46 buildings opened last year - or a failed experiment in privatization.

But even if those issues are resolved, a larger problem still lurks: Utahns don't go to "The Place" much.

It's easy to figure out why. The Place is only The Place for certain people. The 60-year-old monument is more diverse - and much more representative of frontier life in Utah - than the Mormon Pioneer Theme Park that has sprouted at its foot.

Brigham towers from the top, but the base of the granite-and-bronze monument features sculptures of trappers like Jim Bridger and Jedediah Smith who tromped through the Wasatch before the wagon trains. Engravings note Father DeSmet, a Jesuit missionary, explored the territory in 1841. And Chief Washakie, leader of the Eastern Shoshone, was a friend of the Mormon prophet.

Not visible on the monument, there were Chinese railroad workers, freed slaves, Catholic nuns, Greek miners and Jewish merchants in Utah within months of the descent down Emigration Canyon.

But you wouldn't know it to walk along fictional Old Deseret's Brigham and Main Streets. Despite a working blacksmith shop, printing press and "Children's Pioneer Adventure," there's little evidence that anyone who wasn't Caucasian and a faithful follower of Joseph Smith lived in this place before the turn of the century.

Don't get me wrong. Like many Utahns, I trace my family tree back to the Days of '47. We'd trek up the hill every year when grandma visited to search for my great-great-great grandfather's likeness on the face of the monument. John Pack was a scout for Brigham Young. Family legend has it he's one of the bronze statues.

I haven't been back in years. And I'm not unique. Even those of Mormon pioneer stock rarely visit. Last year, 300,000 tourists and locals stopped to look at the monument, but only 35,000 of them paid the $5 entrance fee to go into the village. Twenty-five times that number went to Hogle Zoo - nearly 1 million people. Somehow, they never make it across the street. A quilt museum doesn't pack crowds in like the Elephant Encounter.

"Heritage parks never make it through the gate," says Bill Bleak, a park board member.

Fusty historical sites aren't typically a destination for anyone under 60. Trying to appeal to a younger set this year, the park will add gimmicks like "Baby Animal Days" and a Golden Spike re-enactment with replica trains (the Tribune is sponsoring a caboose) to haul visitors around in the summer heat.

Rather than dabbling with toys and ponies, the park needs to change itself.

Park managers have talked to the descendents of the rest of Utah's pioneers about building a replica of Eureka's Catholic church, Jewish mercantiles and perhaps a Native American exhibit. But financial troubles overtook them.

"We can't manage more than we can manage," says Randon Wilson, one of the park's much-criticized original board members. "Making ends meet is tough, tough work."

Getting more people to buy tickets - perhaps some of the 1 million non-Mormon taxpayers who will share in financing the park's bailout - would help.

walsh@sltrib.com