PIPE SPRING Cultures at a Crossroads: An Administrative History

A Monument to Mormon Pioneers

During the late 1920s and throughout the 1930s, Leonard Heaton appears to have received no outside professional assistance with historical research of the monument or help with preparing interpretive talks or exhibits for the fort. Rather, the concern of administrators was to first repair, restore, or preserve the historic structures, then to furnish the fort appropriately as a house museum. No interpretive brochures were available during this period. All information was provided to visitors orally by Heaton or, at times he was away or indisposed, by his wife Edna. Perhaps by default then, Leonard Heaton took on the role of researching, writing, and telling the monument's history, as best he could. The result was an emphasis on Mormon history, especially as it pertained to the Pipe Spring cattle ranch and settlement of the immediate area.

Most of the historical information used by Heaton appears to have been derived from Church and/or local sources, particularly personal interviews. After Pipe Spring was established as a national monument, descendants of those associated with the fort's history often made visits to Pipe Spring. Family reunions and Establishment Day (celebrated at Pipe Spring on or near May 31 each year) were especially rich times for Heaton to gather stories. Heaton conducted informal interviews whenever he could find the time to chat with "old-timers" returning to visit the site or with visiting descendants of people with historic ties to the site. From time to time, Heaton typed up notes from these conversations from memory and retained them in monument files. He also frequently requested knowledgeable "old-timers" to send him copies of diary entries or other documentation in their possession relating to Pipe Spring. [644]

On occasion, the visiting locals knew so much about the history that they wanted to give their own talks to visiting friends. In such cases, Leonard Heaton despaired of getting a word in edgewise. He wrote Pinkley in 1935:

My greatest problem in handling the visitors is when some local friend brings some relative or other person out to see the Monument, and in the enthusiasm to show the place off, they do all the talking. There are lots of interesting points that are missed and some mistakes made which I can hardly get corrected at all. Maybe I don't have the knack of capturing the interest of these local people who think they know all about the place. If there is anyone in the service who can help me out in this matter I would thank them a lot. [645]