We left around 8:30 for a trip to Southern Utah with Debi’s parents. We stopped at La Fiesta Mexican Restaurant and Cantina for lunch, drove around Cedar City for a bit, then stopped at the ticket office to pick up our tickets for the matinee performance of Cyrano de Bergerac. We had a little time after we picked up our tickets, so we stopped by the Anderson Shakespearean Theatre for an orientation on the play. The Anderson Shakespearean Theatre is an amazing recreation of a 17th Century Shakespearean theater. After the orientation, we walked around for a few minutes then headed in for the play. The play was entertaining, though it wasn’t superb. The lead actor who played Cyrano de Bergerac was very good, but the actor who played Christian wasn’t particularly good and the actor who played Roxane was okay, but was oddly proportioned and not particularly memorable. As plays go, it was both humorous and emotionally touching but could have been better.
After the play, we drove west about 45 miles to Mountain Meadows, the site of the Mountain Meadows Massacre. We got a little nervous as we were trying to find it as there is no actual address to the monuments. This website says that the Mountain Meadows monuments are about 5 miles south of Enterprise on Highway 18. It’s actually about 9 miles south of Enterprise. The monuments are marked with signs and are on the West side of the road. Here’s a Google Maps map of the area. If you’re not familiar with the Mountain Meadows Massacre, basically it was a horrific attack on an innocent wagon train by Mormons in which over 120 men, women, and children were slaughtered without provocation. Visiting the area is sobering. Having read so much about it over the years, it was good to finally put images with the stories.
Here’s a shot of the upper monument. This lists those who died and provides views of the area where the massacre takes place:
Here I am next to the upper monument:
This next photo is of the lower monument. The lower monument marks the spot where the Fancher Party originally camped and then circled up when the massacre began. So, that is the location of the beginning of the attack. You can imagine Mormons and a few Native Americans hiding in the hills around the wagons shooting at them for several days.
This next photo is of the area where the final part of the massacre took place. After laying siege to the wagon train for several days, the Mormons then deceived them by saying they would save them from the Native Americans (who had long since left) but insisted the wagon train give up their guns. They then marched them up the valley about half a mile then turned on them and killed them, unarmed. Here’s where that took place:
This last photo is a closer shot of the lower monument:
From Mountain Meadows we drove down Highway 18 to St. George. For dinner we stopped at Panda Garden.
