The Great Mormon Migration And A Topic That May Crash & Burn

 February 27, 2025

   Here's a sneak peek at the editorial well we are creating for the next issue.

Daily Whip Out: "We are here!"

   Brigham Young launched the Mormon exodus on February 4, 1846 with the goal of taking some 2,200 followers out of the United States to find a refuge in the Great Basin of the Rocky Mountains. "We are here!" he declared in 1848. "We are in the midst of the Lamanites!"  Lamanites, being the Mormon's name for the people who were already there. You know, all the In-dins. And by the end of 1858 more than 6,600 immigrants had traveled west and were living in their new mountain home, in and around the Wasatch Mountains.

Daily Whip Out:

"White Tide Wagon Train On A Red Road"

   A couple problems followed them and they retaliated. That's the Cliff Notes version. We will go into greater detail in the issue with in depth, superb commentary from Paul Andrew Hutton, Jerry Enzler, Ute elder Forrest Cuch and Henry Parke, to name just a few. Much of our coverage is based on the research and scholarship of the late, great Will Bagley (author of "Blood of The Prophets") and the real hero of the entire unfortunate, tawdry affair:

Juanita Brook's grave at Saint George, Utah

(photo by Rocky Gibbons taken this morning)

   When the issue goes to press I intend to head north and pay homage to the historian who saved the true history all by her lonesome. I really feel like there should be a bust of her somewhere prominent in that beautiful but tragic country. Stay tuned for sketches.

   Meanwhile, not everyone is enamored of this story like I am. I recommended the series American Primeval to an old friend, who was our digital consultant when we first bought the magazine and he tried to watch the show and had this response:

"Hedy and I endured two episodes. It looked like the people who did the casting for the Batman movies did this series too. Just too much of the 1950s scripting, modernized with Tarantino gratuitous violence. I read two books on the Mountain Meadows Massacre and nothing about the episodes 1&2 made sense.  The real event was a holocaust of murder. Im not sure TW can find a link to the series that would make historical sense."

   To which, I said: "I hear you. However, it’s a huge hit and we are all in on the true history of the actual events and the making of the show. Wish me luck. Ha."

(that's Allen kneeling at left in front of the T)

This morning I got this reply from him:

"As the master of change and survival, you have proven the critics wrong for 26 TW years."

—Allen Fossenkemper