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Sunday, March 10, 2024

This is the Place VI: Somethin’s Fishy about Saltair

 Previously: The Mystery of the Madeleine

There are some big problems with the "official" story of Utah's Saltair Resort, and this week I will be posing the question:

Was Saltair built by some prior civilization (and still standing) when Brigham Young and the first pioneers arrived in Salt Lake Valley by horse and wagon?

All I ask is that you read to the end before deciding the matter for yourself. And with that, welcome to part 6. 

As a reminder, there is a PDF button on the top left of the blog so that you can read my posts on your ipad or tablet. Also, scroll to the end of this post for a bonus addendum on a corrupt Mormon businessman who ran the Saltair and a host of other enterprises for LDS Inc. 

For now, let’s take a look at Saltair’s ridiculous construction narrative.

The Four Month Miracle  

According to our historical narrative the last decade of the 19th century was one of the richest architectural eras the world has ever seen. From the Chicago World's Fair of 1893, to the building of massive amusement parks such as New York's Coney Island Dreamland, America experienced leaps in technology and neoclassical construction - or so the story goes anyway...

Even from its nestled location deep within the Wasatch corridor, Salt Lake City was not exempt from this supposed building bonanza, giving birth to such architectural icons as the Salt Lake City and County Building, and the one and only Saltair Pavilion Resort, both finished, they tell us, within a year of each other.

We are told that the Saltair began as a vision by LDS Church leaders and local businessmen in 1891 to become the "Coney Island of the West," inspiring polygamist Apostle Abraham Cannon (son of George Q. Cannon) to express in his journal an excitement for this Mormon "business venture."

The 1890s were a tough decade for the Church. Still reeling from massive financial losses resulting from the 1887 Edmunds-Tucker Act which dissolved its corporate status, the LDS Church would construct a railroad to span 18 miles from the city to the Great Salt Lake shore. The official story of the Saltair is that Church leaders wanted to invest in a "recreation area" which would provide jobs for lay members.

In 1893, a major U.S. recession hit, but construction on the Moorish Revival style pavilion commenced in February (winter) of 1893. We are told that the resort was completely finished and fully open for business (drawing thousands of daily visitors) a week after Memorial day (May) of that same year.

As we examine the rest of the official story about Saltair look for and think about things that just don't fit. Remember, there were no power tools at the time. 

We are told that in under four months, in the winter of 1893, during a major recession, Utah pioneers cut, logged and transported via horse and wagon (over dirt roads in some unknown forest) to Salt Lake City more than 2,500 non-tapered lodge pole pine trees the size of telephone poles.

Then they unloaded them from horse drawn transport wagons onto train cars on the newly built rail line 18 miles out to the shore and unloaded those 2,500 trees onto a flat boat floating in no less than 5 feet of water. We are told, and expected to believe that they used two steam driven "diggers" on the flatboats to dig 2,500 perfectly spaced holes down 14 feet into the lake bottom sediment, and then the multi-ton log poles were somehow picked up vertically and lowered down into the holes, then precisely stabilized and leveled by hand. From moving boats. In the winter. These log piles were so secure and stable that they were able to build a pavilion the size of four New York City blocks spanning 1200 feet long, 355 feet at its widest, and 100 feet at its tallest, complete with public boardwalks and tracks for a train. 

Oh what those amazing pioneers could do in 1893, in the winter, during a recession, with horses and wagons, without power tools, and in less than 4 months.

As you seeing the picture yet?

Visitors from all over the world came to Utah between the years of 1893 to 1925 to soak in America's own "Dead Sea," and enjoy the health benefits of a true mineral bath. 


The LDS owners would eventually add a bicycle racing track, a restaurant, a massive roller coaster, and several hundred bathhouses, making this amusement and bathing park the largest in the West. Even Teddy Roosevelt made a visit to the Great Saltair, along with many other celebrities during the first few decades of the 20th century.

The Salt Lake Railroad laid the tracks out over the water and built a train station on piles as shown below:


  And here we see the massive roller coaster:


Here, inside the domed pavilion, was a stage with seating for 3,000 people and the largest dancefloor in the world at the time. The Saltair employed two full-time bands, and one of them was always playing. Remember, all these curved steel support beams and trusses which can be seen in this 100 ft. tall dome building were installed without power tools or electric/hydraulic cranes to lift them into place - only block and tackle and ladder technology. In less than 4 months, after all the log piles were driven and all the foundation board was laid.


And here is the Hippodrome where they showed movies, sold concessions, and held bicycle races:


And here we see the massive boardwalk leading down the pier to the pavilion with hundreds of thousands of square feet of perfectly logged, transported, milled and finished boards:


This resort was a big deal, and it truly put Salt Lake on the map as a major attraction, until of course it "burned down" in 1925. 

Along with the typical anomalies we find in the construction narratives of old-world buildings, the history of the Saltair also reveals the modus operandi of how the LDS Church uses its purchasing power to dominate business and industry, even in or especially in a recession.

The financial angle of the ChurchTm may be somewhat of a detour from the topic of the Old World Saltair Resort, but I found it too interesting not to reveal. 

The Curious Case of Mathew White

The beach that the Saltair was "constructed" on was owned by a man named Mathew White. As the story goes, it had originally been his dream to build a subdivision on the edge of the lake, a development he planned on naming the Saltair Beach. 

White owned 744 acres of beachfront property, but needed investors to help develop the land. According to an old survey map drawn by engineer Robert Gorlinski, there were existing buildings on White's land, but we are not given any details about them. 

I wonder what these buildings were and how they were built without a railway leading to the lake? This begs the question: was the Saltair pavilion indeed founded by Mormon pioneers and simply renovated later? 

We are told that White had originally purchased the property from James Jack (secretary of the LDS First Presidency), G.H. Snell (founder of the Inland Salt Company), and Nephi W. Clayton, the son of Mormon pioneer William Clayton, who had acted at times as a scribe for Joseph Smith. Many of us know him as the man who falsely claimed that he received D&C Section 132 directly under Joseph's dictation.

Ironically, White approached the same men whom he had purchased the property from and it was decided that they would enter a new partnership and create a business called the Saltair Beach Company. The arrangement allowed White to sell the land back to the Church but still remain a stockholder on the Saltair investment.

This part of the story is very strange. It appears that the Church itself was the original owner of Saltair Beach, and these men representing the financial interests of the Church, i.e., Snell, Clayton, and Jack, sought out Mathew White and sold him the property in 1888, just to buy it back in 1889.

Something smells fishy here.

I learned about all of this in an obscure master's thesis written by S. Todd Shoemaker, published by the University of Utah in 1983.

The title of the book is Saltair and the Mormon Church, 1893-1906.

Shoemaker searched through Salt Lake county records and found the deeds conveying the property to each of these men in 1888, as well as Mathew White's deed in 1889.

According to the narrative, it was supposed to have been White's idea to build a resort on the beach, but Shoemaker discovered a major anomaly in this story in the obituary of G.H. Snell, who suddenly died in 1896 from "throat and liver problems" at the young age of 49.

The Deseret News announced in the obituary that it had been Snell who had concocted the vision for the Saltair resort in 1888, before the land was sold to Mathew White. In light of this discovery, Shoemaker asks the following question:
Why is it that these three men--Snell, Jack, and Clayton--and even J.E. Langford, a future manager of Saltair, first own the property, sell it to White, have White create his grandiose plans, and then the three, as part of the Saltair Beach Company, buy it back again and include White, a nonmember [of the Church], as a major stockholder and director of the company? Was it planned this way and G.H. Snell knew all along, including White, that when Snell sold the land eventually a corporation would be established, or did the three see what economic possibilities White's plan afforded and pressure him to sell it back? (p. 48)

Whatever the reasons for involving Mathew White in Church business, as we shall see, he wasn't involved in the company for long. And as for G.H. Snell and his mysterious death, perhaps he had become a liability for the Church, because as Shoemaker observes, "He [Snell] traveled extensively worldwide and became a capable newspaper correspondent, presumably for local Salt Lake Newspapers."

Perhaps the Church was worried that Snell would speak too openly about the what was happening at Saltair behind the scenes. To me, when I hear someone dies of "liver" problems at age 49, I think poison. It is has been theorized by some that Church leaders have used poison before to remove a potential rival to Brigham Young. His name was Samuel Smith, and he died under the care of Hosea Stout only one month after his brothers were murdered. 

Ironically, it was William Clayton who had heard Joseph say that if something happened to him and Hyrum, Samuel would take their place. 

I wonder if Nephi Clayton was also an informant on G.H. Snell?    

Regardless, Mathew White was the only nonmember stockholder on the board of directors, which, as we shall see, did not bode well for him.

He sold the land to the Saltair Beach Company for $125,000, which was $25,000 more than he paid for it, but was only able to collect a partial payment before things began to go awry.

As it turns out, Nephi Clayton was just as dishonest as his father William, and appears to have orchestrated a plan to push White out of the company and swindle him out of his shares, as well as his land.

They literally took everything from him.  

In the Fall of 1891, the board of directors organized the Saltair Beach Company with White elected as the manager and Nephi Clayton as the secretary. A few months later Nephi would strategically resign and Joseph F. Smith would file a motion to elect Nephi's brother, Isaac, as secretary. 

As manager, White proposed lowering the price of the lots on the beach property to help sales because the land was not moving. This led to another conflict between White and Clayton over making improvements to the properties. The board of directors had created a new salt company to rival the Inland Crystal Salt Company that White had been working with. Clayton was also made the manager of that new salt company.

Clayton soon told White to inform the Inland Crystal Salt Company to stay off the beach property altogether, which only made tensions worse. 

Soon thereafter the First Presidency (Wilford Woodruff, Joseph F. Smith, and George Q. Cannon) came out to the property to meet with White as his residence. It was determined that the board of directors would deed 7-1/2 acres of White's original land to the Salt Lake and Los Angeles Railroad, which White vehemently, but powerlessly opposed with his one vote of dissent.  

Interestingly enough, Joseph F. Smith was the director of the Salt Lake and Los Angeles Railroad, and guess who managed it? Nephi Clayton. The LDS Church just happened to own the controlling stock in that company as well.

It seems as if the Church was strategically buying up majority shares in industry related businesses and bullying everyone out who wasn't a good o'l boy? Is this indeed how the Church still operates today? This strategy smacks of Mitt Romney's Bain Capital.  

White became so frustrated that he refused to have his name presented as a board member and resigned as manager. Nephi Clayton, patiently waiting in the wings, assumed the managerial position and continued to push White to the edge. 

Finally, Mathew White had had enough, and proposed to sell his 200 shares for $28,000, which was $8,000 more than he had purchased them for. The majority of the board members voted no, including: James Jack, Joseph F. Smith, Nephi W. Clayton, Wilford Woodruff, and George Q. Cannon (Cannon was the majority shareholder holding 1250 shares).

Although G.H. Snell was still including White's name on the board of directors as late as 1894, Mathew White and his 200 shares of company stock were never heard of again, and he vanished from the minute book records of the Saltair Beach Company. 

As far as we know, he was never paid for his shares nor his land. Did the Church use its financial prowess to strip this man of virtually everything, even his original house on the beach property where he had so generously wined and dined Church leaders while brokering the initial deal?

It certainly appears that way. 

In searching through old newspaper archives I was able to find an article in The Daily Tribune that briefly mentions a lawsuit between Mathew White and the Saltair Beach Company. They were still in litigation as late as 1895, and I do not believe White ever received compensation, or that any Church leaders were held accountable for this blatant thievery.

This begs the question: why would Church leaders involve Mathew White in the development of the Saltair? Was it just to dupe him into buying their land just so they could rip him off when he sold it back? Or was something else going on?

If the Saltair pavilion already existed then it would've surely been "founded" (found) by Church leaders when they arrived in 1847, so why the inclusion of this nonmember in the narrative?

Perhaps the truth is that the Church was struggling financially because of the Edmunds Tucker Act and the poor economy during the time, and needed the help of outside investors to engage in the renovation of the Saltair and the addition of the future amusement park. 

Or, perhaps White was a ghost and never existed at all. Maybe he was a mere generation of the AI that write the scripts of these narratives. And yes, I believe that AI has been around for much longer than we have been told.

Either way, Mathew White's name on the Saltair does not bode well for the LDS Church and its questionable business tactics.  

Built in Record Time

With White out of the way, Nephi Clayton began gathering the permits from city officials to build the railroad from Salt Lake City to the Saltair beach. As stated before, Clayton was the manager of the Salt Lake Railroad as well, placed there by the Church who owned the majority of shares in the company. 

The railroad was quickly built in less than a year during 1892 (another one-year wonder of the 1800s), and by winter of 1893 construction began on the Saltair pavilion resort. As I stated in the introduction of this post, it is claimed that the entire structure was built in less than four months, including the drilling and setting of the massive wooden piles. Here is a close up of them:


The company that supposedly provided the lumber was Eccles Lumber, yet we are given no details of where it was harvested from or how Clayton had it shipped to the jobsite. We are just told that forty nameless men mounted two steam drills to flat bloats and floated around drilling holes in the lake. 

(If you look up the history of Eccles Lumber, there is no mention of the Saltair Pavilion at all). 

As the narrative goes, the lake bed consisted of dense sodium sulphate, the steam drill would temporary soften this material, a pile would be placed, and a few hours later the sodium would harden like concrete.

I wonder how they were able to get these posts level enough to install a boardwalk and a deck for the pavilion without laser levels? It seems to me that this task alone would've taken months or even a year, yet we are told it took just a few weeks during the month of February. 

There is literally a dearth of academic literature detailing the construction history of this building, and our only source of such information comes from the owners themselves... quite conveniently. 

The Saltair Beach Company minute book is the only source of information on the building of this resort, and curiously, there are no entries during the first few months of the initial phase of construction.

Shoemaker himself is quite surprised by the lack of detail surrounding the construction and the speed at which it progressed, as expressed in the following commentary:
It is difficult to believe that such a project could be accomplished when one looks at the immense structure and considers the inclement weather that the lake normally experiences during the months of February through June. It is also surprising that there is so little information on this important period of Saltair. It is disappointing that in the Saltair Beach minutes there are no entries from the last meeting on November 15, 1892 until March 15, 1893. (Saltair and the Mormon Church, pp. 79-80)

Shoemaker goes on to quote an article published by the Deseret Evening News in January of 1893:

So quietly has the consummation of this project been carried on that many people in this city have barely heard of it and if they have learned of it the information has come to them in such a roundabout manner they have not attached much importance to it. (Quoted on p. 81)

"So quietly" it's almost as if it the construction never happened at all...maybe because it was already there. 

The minute book of Saltair Beach Company offers the following construction details:

Richard Kletting was the architect, the same man who allegedly designed the Utah and Idaho State Capitol buildings, and various other buildings in Salt Lake City. 

The contractor awarded the job was Eccles, Dederich, Level, Conrad and Company. I can't find any information on this "company," but it is interesting that we see the name Eccles, or more specifically David Eccles, who was the father of Spencer Eccles, the former director of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. I wrote about the Eccles family here.

Again we see the name of an elite insider used in yet another building narrative. And what I failed to include in my last post is that Spencer Eccles and John Huntsman were major donors to the restoration of the Cathedral of the Madeleine during the 1970s and 1990s.

The minute book claims that 800 men were employed on the project, but not a mention of a single name. Where are the journal entries of these men? Who trained them in fine woodwork and dome building? What kind of scaffolding was used to build the dome up to 100 feet tall? Were wooden cranes used? How were the massive iron support beams and trusses in the dome installed? 

How did the men get back and forth to the jobsite? Where were they being housed? If they rode the train from the city to the job site daily then who paid for the commute and where are the financial records? Was it even possible to transport that many men on a train at once?

How was it possible to train that many men in such a short amount of time or to even supervise them?

All of these logistical details are omitted from the narrative.  

And all of this in just four months? 

I'm not buying it. 

The narrative of the Saltair is reminiscent of so many buildings constructed during the same era: lack of details, super-human abilities and skills, accomplished in record time, and abstract construction photos like the one below that features men in top hats rather than actual construction workers. 

In these old photos we often see scaffolding superimposed around an already-built structure, or size anomalies like this photo of the pavilion and dome below. Judging from the scale of the people on the floor, the dome appears much smaller than it really would've been at a length of 264 feet: 


Here again is the photo of the finished dome for comparison. Notice it looks much larger:


As you can see, the dance floor was illuminated by hanging lights suspended from the dome. This begs the question: how was power brought out to the lake? 

During the 1890s the technologies used to for lighting and power were as follows: steam, hydroelectric, gas, and power lines supplied by a distant generator. The problem back in those days was that electrical loads demanding power had to be fairly close to the generators. 

We are simply not told whether power lines were installed along the Saltair Railway that led to the resort, and it wasn't until 1916 that this railway became electrified.

It makes more sense that power was generated locally at the resort. But how? 

According to the Saltair Beach Company minute book, the Utah and Montana Machinery Company performed the electrical work on the building, and a substantial debt was accumulated to a local electrical supplier. So what was installed out there?

According to John S. McCormick (Utah's court historian), who wrote a book called Saltair, there were thousands of lights installed during the initial construction. To me, it is more likely that the electrical contractor was hired to install the lighting in an already existing building, with an already existing power source.

Just installing the lighting alone on such a massive resort could've easily taken 3-6 months... yet we are told that the entire resort was built from the lake up to the highest dome in a mere 4 month period, in the dead of winter. 

The first ten minutes of the video below offers a interesting perspective on how salt water (highly conductive) and the Saltair's spires may have been part of an advanced technology to generate electricity. Start at the 1-minute mark to skip the intro:


Burn Baby Burn

In 1916 the first fire broke out, resulting in only a small amount of damage, later in 1925, the entire pavilion burnt down. According to John S. McCormick in his book Saltair, this is how it went down:
Early in the spring of 1925, as workmen readied Saltair for another record-breaking season, a fire broke out in the Ali Baba Cave concession under the grandstand seats of the Hippodrome. At 2:25 P.M. on April 22, an employee smelled smoke and discovered a four-foot wall of flames. He beat it out with his hands and had reduced the fire to embers before running for help. In the two minutes he was gone, the wind fanned the smoldering coals to a blaze. Workmen hurried to put it out and quickly sounded the alarm bell. A telephone call was made to Salt Lake for help, but the raging fire spread into the Hippodrome. For two hours Saltair employees, workers, concessionaires, and volunteers tried to save the pavilion. Firefighters from Salt Lake were on the scene in record time. Some arrived on specially built flatcars kept in readiness to speed fire engines to the resort, and the Sugar House fire station came with the only truck that could pump salt water. 

About 4 P.M. the winds shifted away from the resort, and it looked for a time as if the famed pavilion could be saved. Maddeningly, minutes later the wind swerved and drove the fire back toward the pavilion, fanning the flames into an inferno. As the Tribune reported, "tongues of the flame and smoke leaped fifty to one hundred feet [and] shot out and licked up the timbers and beams of the great structure as though they were cardboard." Heat and smoke drove the firefighters away, and the fire burned out of control. Within ten minutes the pavilion was a mass of twisted iron and charred beams. (p. 53)

McCormick's story is not adding up: a small fire starts at 2 P.M. in a concession stand, in the middle of a typical work day with scores of employees running around the resort, and a brisk wind comes up and the whole thing burns to the ground by 4 P.M.?

A more believable story would've been that a stealth arsonist started the fire in the dead of night. 

And why would iron "twist" in a common building fire? Does McCormick realize what kind of force this would take? The iron in the dome made up the frame that supported the wood, if the wood burned to ashes the iron frame would still be standing, unless of course the temperature of the fire reached upwards of 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit. A typical building fire burns at around 1500 degrees Fahrenheit, and could not reach iron-buckling temperatures in the ten-minute window that McCormick is giving it here.  

This to me sounds more like a deliberate demolition or even a bombing raid. And another strange thing is that there are no casualties reported. The entire pavilion falls to the ground in less than ten minutes (during business hours) and not a single person killed or injured?

Shortly thereafter the LDS Church, headed by Mr. Corporation Sole himself, Heber J. Grant, offered the charred remains of the property to Salt Lake City Mayor C. Clarence Neslen as a gift to the city. Because they didn't have the estimated $300,000 to restore the building, the city respectfully declined.

Finally, in January of 1926, the Church sold the property to a conglomerate of businessmen who pooled resources to reconstruct the resort. One of these men was Willard T. Cannon, son of George Q. Cannon, which allowed the Church to keep one foot in the door of this new venture.

The new owners hired two architects to resurrect Richard Kletting's old drawing of the original Saltair: Raymond J. Ashton and Raymond L. Evans. A typical pattern you find in these AI generated stories is the use of the same names over and over again. Check out the video below for a more detailed analysis of this phenomenon, at the 9-minute-mark he goes into the AI repetitions: 



Work soon began on the Saltair II, which looked just like the first one with only slight variations. We are told that the structure was completed within a year, typical of so many amazing buildings of the era. And of course, we are given no construction details. 

It apparently looked like this:



Not unlike the original Saltair as shown below, yet we can see a few differences, which makes me wonder: did the building even burn down at all?


Then, in 1931, another fire swept through the roller coaster known as the Giant Racer, and in 1951, yet another fire torched many of the bath houses. In 1957, a strong wind blew the remnants of the roller coaster down. Finally, in 1970, the entire resort burned to the ground... for good.

The Saltair III was eventually built in its place, and this is what it looks like today, a pathetic shell of the beautiful architecture that once spanned out over the salty paradise:



Why is the fire narrative so significant?

Because this was a way for the powers that be to hide evidence of the Old World. 

Apparently, every major city in the United States nearly burned to ashes during the 1800s. Most of us have heard of the 1871 Great Fire of Chicago when a cow tipped over a candle and the entire city was destroyed, but no one told us that thousands upon thousands of stone and brick buildings were leveled to the ground as a result of these fires. 

I thought stone and brick weren't flammable? Apparently during the 1800s, these substances burned freely. 

In the video below, My Lunch Break shows that you can google "great fire" and pick about any city in America and come up with a historical fire:



What is even more interesting is that we are told that there were relatively few casualties as a result of these fires, even in cities like Chicago where thousands of buildings were destroyed. The first fire narrative we have was the great fire of London in 1666, and that date alone should arouse our suspicions:



Do you really think that this many random fires happened spontaneously all throughout the 1800s, or is there something else afoot? I mean, what are the odds of that really happening? 

In my opinion, this was deliberate destruction through some advanced technological weaponry, or the righteous vengeance of a just God. 

The real question is this: was an entire civilization erased from the earth during this time period, and if so then who were they?

Obviously, there are not answers to this question, but we can look to the scriptures for clues about how a just God conducts vengeful destruction when nations are ripened in iniquity.

And a major clue that God leaves behind is simple salt.

Join me next week when we explore the mysterious connection between fire and salt... and what that might mean for Utah.

For now I just want to leave you with these final thoughts. 

When studying old world buildings, we often discover that they are said to have burned down multiple times before the modern structures we see today are erected in their place. How do we know the truth of what really happened? In the case of the Saltair, was it really rebuilt within one year in 1926 or was the same structure always there until it met it's final doom in 1970?

As always I don't have the answers, all I can come up with are a slew of never ending questions. The deeper I go down the rabbit hole of the Old World, the more I realize I don't know anything.

On the first page of McCormick's book he quotes an excerpt from Wilford Woodruff's journal about a visit to the Great Salt Lake in 1847. Apparently, only three days after their arrival in the Salt Lake Valley, Brigham Young and a few other leaders made the 16-mile trip to Black Rock to take a dip in Salt Lake's southern shore. Just a few years later rumors began to circulate that Church leaders were already making plans to build a future resort on the beach.

My question is this: how did Brigham and crew know exactly where to go to find Black Rock so easily? Was this included on the maps given to them by Pierre de Smet in 1846? And was the existing Saltair pavilion also on the map? I can only imagine the awe of the young leaders as they marveled at the abandoned elaborate structure that lay before them. 

Perhaps they dreamed of a future time when they had the technology and the means to renovate and transform the edifice into the lucrative resort that would bring in endless revenue. 
 

Photos I took of a recent trip to the Saltair ruins:















Bonus Addendum: The Corruption of Nephi W. Clayton

Nephi Clayton was involved behind the scenes in scores of Mormon businesses, which appear (on paper) to have been handed over to him. He appears to have been a yes man as well as a fall man for what Mormon leaders were up to behind the scenes. 

Nephi Willard Clayton may just be the most corrupt Mormon businessman you've never heard of. He isn't even mentioned in D. Michael Quinn's Mormon Hierarchy: Wealth and Corporate Power, but indeed should be. Being the son of William Clayton, the man on whom hinges the entire legitimacy (or lack thereof) of D&C Section 132, Nephi is definitely someone who shouldn't be immune from our scrutiny.

Yet somehow he has managed to escape criticism throughout all the annals of LDS history. The truth? Clayton was a prodigious tool.

If you google his name the first thing that comes up is a court case from 1890: Clayton v. People of the Territory of Utah. He was accused by William H. Dickson (representing the prosecution) of "usurping and intruding into the office of auditor of public accounts" in the year 1879. He was only 24 years old. He claimed that he wasn't aware that he was functioning within this office "without the authority of law," which may have been true, but I don't believe that he was telling the truth.

The position of auditor of public accounts was handed to Nephi when his father William passed away in 1879. I guess politics was a family business for the Claytons. Although it was supposed to only be a four-year appointment, Clayton enjoyed this post up until 1890, when he found himself embroiled in the lawsuit.

What does an auditor of public accounts do?

They are supposed to conduct audits of government agencies in order to protect taxpayers from waste, fraud, and abuse. 

Yet this man engaged in all three of these indecencies in his personal business dealings.

Upon his forced retirement from the position he was immediately made a staff member in the cabinet of governor Caleb W. West, which continued with Heber M. Wells. After serving under Governor West he was given the rank of lieutenant colonel, which rendered unto him the nickname of Colonel Clayton. 

Much like Edward Mandell House, Clayton was made a colonel without ever having served in an actual army.

I believe there is a reason why we have heard little about this man... because on corporate paper he was literally everywhere. In addition to being a shareholder, a director, and the manager of the Saltair Beach Company, the Inland Salt Company, and the Salt Lake Railway, he simultaneously enjoyed similar positions in this exhaustive list of enterprises:
President of Clayton Investment Company; president of Consolidated Music Company; president of Inland Delray Salt Lake Company at Detroit, Michigan; president of Utah Sulphur Company; owner of Syndicated Insurance Company; president and owner of Clayton Land and Cattle Company; president of Inland Railroad Company; president of N.W. Clayton Company; director of Utah State National Bank; chairman, executive committee of the Inland Crystal Salt Company; president of the Brigham Young Trust Company. (Saltair and the Mormon Church, p. 70)

Is it even possible for one man to run so many companies? I think that Church leaders were using his name so that they could secretly run these enterprises from behind the scenes as silent majority shareholders.

There was a famous scam perpetrated by the Union Pacific railroad during the 1860s and 70s known as the Credit Mobilier. Because the U.P. was subsidized by public bonds, the owners (men like Grenville Dodge) came up with a scheme to make double profits off of building the railroad (such schemes are easy to perpetuate when you're playing with taxpayer money). 

In essence, the managers of the U.P. created another construction company (in house) and "hired" them to build the railroad. When it came time for billing, the newly created subsidiary charged its mother, the U.P., $50 million dollars over the actual cost of building the railroad, and the managers pocketed the change.

They created a company within a company and made it appear as if they were fleecing themselves, when in reality they were actually fleecing the bondholders, shareholders, and ultimately, the tax payers who were subsidizing them - for the greater "good" of building the transcontinental railroads.  

Although I can't prove it, I have a hunch the LDS Church was doing something similar with Clayton and all these enterprises. Rather than tax money, Church leaders were playing with tithing funds, but the concept of using public outlays for personal gain remains the same. Shoemaker provides an interesting commentary on Church business tactics as follows:

What applied to the church's handling of colonization, and enterprises such as the Salt Lake Street Railroad Company, Salt Lake City Gas Company, Zion's Savings Bank and Trust Company, Provo Woolen Mills, and ZCMI, and the sugar and salt industries, also applied to Saltair. The church formed an ecclesiastical corporation to hold church property and sold shares of stock, but always retained a controlling interest. If the company faltered, the church could invest more money to save it, or, as later policy developed, go to outside investors to keep things going. As times, not enough stockholders could be found to support a church project. To keep a low profile, the church would have individuals place their names as stockholders and then provide them the monetary backing. (Saltair and the Mormon Church, pp. 85-86, emphasis added) 

Of all the companies that Clayton was entangled in, the Brigham Young Trust Company is of particular interest for this post because it was involved in real estate. There is not much information available on this company, but it does get a brief mention in Quinn's Mormon Hierarchy: Wealth and Corporate Power.

The Brigham Young Trust Company had "control of the real estate in the Salt Lake City business district." Zion's Securities was started as a sister company to it. During the Panic of 1893, it defaulted on a loan of $50,000 owed to Wells Fargo, and was eventually dissolved and succeeded by Clayton Investment Company. (See Quinn, p. 513)

Nephi W. Clayton was also president of that company, which gave him control over all the business real estate in Salt Lake City. 

Why is this significant?

Because this company had control of many of the buildings that I've been blogging about in this series (and will blog about in later posts). This is how I believe they distributed these existing buildings and retained controlling financial interests in them.

1893 was an interesting year in Mormon history. In addition to the Salt Lake Temple being dedicated and the Saltair "built," the Panic of 1893 hit banks all across America, and the Mormon Church nearly went insolvent.

Heber J. Grant was sent to New York by Wilford Woodruff to attempt to secure loans to save the Church. But after months of meeting with bankers, he was only able to borrow $200,000 from John Claflin, president of H.B. Claflin Company of New York. We are told that this loan supposedly saved the Church, yet we are also told that the construction (I believe renovation) of the Saltair alone cost the Church $350,000.

Compared to the many other investments and businesses the Church was running, $200,000 was merely a drop in a bucket. So how did they really survive?

Well, during the summer of 1893 President Woodruff sent George Q. Cannon to England to meet with Baron Rothschild and his brothers to discuss a loan. The official story is that the Church was denied, but hold on a minute here...not just anyone can set up a personal meeting with the Rothschilds. (See the article, Crisis in Zion: Heber J. Grant and the Panic of 1893

The Church must've enjoyed some measure of status or tenure with these bankers for a meeting to set up so easily. This begs the question:

Was this meeting merely a check-in with the real masters of Mormon finance?

I believe there is much more to this story then we are being told, but for now I can only speculate.

Getting back to Nephi Clayton, after five years of managing the Saltair a report was written and sent to Joseph F. Smith indicting Nephi with several charges of corruption. This was known as the McMillan Report, written by William McMillan in 1898, a concerned beach company employee.

The report reveals that Nephi and his brother Isaac often used business funds for personal use. Even Nephi's entrance fee for the prestigious Alta Club (the fact that he was a member of this secret society should tell us something about Nephi) was paid for by the Saltair Beach Company. They took food stuffs from the restaurant for hunting trips, lumber to build their personal houses, and grossly mismanaged the Salt Lake Railway and Inland Crystal Salt Company. Furthermore, Clayton had a gambling problem, and according to author John S. McCormick, may have even owned a brothel in Salt Lake City.

A police captain was even willing to testify to McMillan "of certain immoral conduct that he has personally witnessed on the part of N.W.C." (To read the entire report, see pp. 108-111 of Shoemaker's Saltair and the Mormon Church.)

This begs the question: why would the Church allow such a shady character to manage so many of their enterprises?

It is true that Nephi Clayton stepped down as manager as a result of the McMillan report and was replaced by Jeremiah E. Langford, who managed the Saltair up until 1906 when the Church decided to sell the resort. But Nephi retained his shares and continued to manage the other companies for the Church. 

In 1906, the Church decided the sell the resort to...guess who? Nephi Clayton, Jeremiah Langford, C.W. Nibley, and Joseph Nelson - the same people who had been involved with the Saltair all along.

But in reality the Church never sold the resort at all, but only made it appear as if they had done so, because as you'll recall, when it burned down in 1925, Heber J. Grant tried to the give it away to the Mayor of Salt Lake City.

Yet, even when they sold it in 1926, one of the buyers was William T. Cannon, son of George Q. Cannon, so did they really ever let it go? 

Remember, it was George that held the majority of the shares (1250 to be exact) in the original Saltair. Did he pass these to his son William, and through him was the Church able to maintain its controlling interest in the resort?

This certainly seems to be the way the Church conducts business. It makes me wonder how much industry in Utah the LDS Church maintains silent control over.

Perhaps one reason for the Church's economic success in Utah can be contributed to being the inheritors of an abandoned city full of Old World buildings.

Can you imagine finding a city with streets already laid out in perfect grid form, full of stone buildings that only require cleaning or limited interior renovation? Once those buildings were ready to be used and/or leased out the potential income stream would be lucrative and perpetual.

Haven't you ever wondered why Joseph Smith was so economically unsuccessful yet Brigham become rich as soon as he went west?

For one, Joseph's heart was not set upon riches, but while he ran the Church he was either in jail or battling against the secret contingent of polygamous apostles operating in opposition against him.

Brigham, on the other hand, was cold and calculated, making sure to involve himself personally in every enterprise started with tithing funds in Utah. While Joseph died in poverty and obscurity, Brigham died a millionaire.

Doesn't it make more sense that Brigham had a little help from the powers that be? From the likes of say the Jesuits, or even the Rothschilds?

Regardless of where the Church's power and wealth emanated from, the Book of Mormon informs us that it won't last forever. These ominous words from our Lord to the Nephites should be ringing in the ears of those running the corporate Church today:

But if it [the Church] be not built upon my gospel, and is built upon the works of men or upon the works of the Devil, verily I say unto you, they have their joy in their works for a season, and by and by the end cometh, and they are hewn down and cast into the fire from whence there is no return, and their works do follow them. (3 Nephi 12:4, RE)

Until next time, enjoy these videos specifically questioning the historical narrative of Salt Lake City:







Sunday, February 25, 2024

This is the Place V: The Mystery of the Madeleine - An Old World Cathedral in Salt Lake City?

Previously: Let's Build a Capitol Building

Welcome readers to Part V, where we'll explore the history, or lack thereof, of the Cathedral of the Madeleine in Salt Lake City. 

Madeleine is the French rendition of Magdalene, and the Madeleine in Salt Lake City is only one of two cathedrals in the entire world dedicated to Mary Magdalene. The other one is in France.

When we really get into the construction narratives of these old-world buildings we find that sometimes the narrators don't even try to explain how some of them came to be. 

At least some contractors were named in the Salt Lake City-County and Utah State Capitol buildings, but with the Cathedral of the Madeleine, we have nothing but an architect, a Catholic bishop, and some unnamed laborers.

Wikipedia offers no construction details at all about this neo-Romanesque and neo-Gothic building, except that construction began in 1900 and was completed in 1909. Well, 9 years is definitely more believable than the 3 and 4 years the last two buildings I blogged about supposedly took, but let's dig into what the narrative actually says.

For that we have to begin in the 1700s, where we'll discover that Catholic explorers were the first to come to Utah, or so they say...

Six Noble Cities and Hundreds of Towns

In Part II of this series, I visited the story of Brigham Young's meeting with Jesuit priest Pierre de Smet at Winter Quarters in 1846, who had explored the Great Basin during the 1830s. But he wasn't the first Catholic to grace Utah with his presence. 

Spain began exploration of the American West during the 1500s, but the first Catholics to enter the Great Basin were military spies masquerading as missionaries in 1765. They were sent from Santa Fe by Spanish explorer Juan Maria Antonio de Rivera.

Spain controlled vast regions of North and South America at the time, and in 1776, two Franciscan friars, Dominguez and Escalante, explored Utah while endeavoring to establish Catholic missions among the natives.

In the same book that describes the meeting between Brigham and de Smet, a history of Dominguez and Escalante is given of their travels in the West. Interestingly enough, it is claimed these Franciscan Spaniards blazed the original "Mormon Trail" to California through "Mountain Meadow" (yes the famous one close to Cedar City), down the Santa Clara Fork of the Virgin River, through the tip of Arizona, down through Nevada, and into the desert we know now as Death Valley.

Are you surprised to learn that the Catholics discovered Mountain Meadows long before the Mormon attack on Protestant pioneers on September 11th of 1857? This helps to confirm my suspicions that Lee and Young were acting under the orders of Jesuit priests when they planned and executed this genocide. 

The name of the book mentioned above is The Catholic Church in Utah, written by Father Lawrence Scanlan, and published by the Knights of Columbus in 1909. Father Scanlan was the first Bishop of the Cathedral of the Madeleine in Salt Lake City and is credited as its supposed builder; there is an old picture of the building in the first page of the book.

So here he have a few coincidences... but lately, I don't believe in coincidences at all. 

As it turns out, a French explorer by the name of Baron de Lahontan ran into some natives during an expedition while serving in the French military in the late 1600s, and they described their homeland as being in the vicinity of a great salt lake.

In his memoirs, published in 1703, he describes meeting with these natives somewhere along the Missouri River. The meeting was supervised by a chief named Cacick who had control over several tribes spanning hundreds of miles. One of the tribes enslaved to this king/chief was called the Mozeemlek nation. Upon meeting four of these men, whom he referred to as slaves, he immediately mistook them for Spaniards:
... for, the Mozeemlek savages were cloath'd [sic], they had a thick bushy beard, and their hair hung down under their ears; their complexion was swarthy [dark], their address was civil and submissive, their meen [demeanor?] grave, and their carriage engaging...

These four slaves then preceded to show him a deerskin map of their nation while offering a verbal explanation of their society: 

The mountains I spoke of but now, are six leagues broad, and so high that one must cast an infinity of windings and turnings before he can cross 'em. Bears and wild beasts are their only inhabitants. 

The Mozeemlek Nation is numerous and puissant. The four slaves of the country inform'd [sic] me, that at the distance of 150 leagues from the place where I then was, their principal river empties it self into a Salt Lake of three hundred leagues in circumference, the mouth of which is about two leagues broad: That the lower part of that river is adorn'd [sic] with six noble cities, surrounded with stone cemented with fat earth: That the houses of these cities have no roofs, but are open like a platform, as you see 'em drawn in the map: That besides the abovemention'd [sic] cities, there were above an hundred towns, great and small, round that sort of sea, upon which they navigate with such boats as you see drawn in the map: That the people of that country made stuffs, copper axes, and several other manufactures... That their government was despotick [sic], and lodg'd [sic] in the hands of one great Head, to whom the rest paid a trembling submission.

That the people upon that lake call themselves Tahuglauk, and are as numerous as the leaves of trees, (such is the expression that the savages use for an hyperbole:) That the Mozeemlek people supply the cities or towns of the Tahuglauk with great numbers of calves, which they take upon the abovemention'd [sic] mountains... (New Voyages to North America, pp. 124-25)

Lahontan claimed that the natives told him that he was about 150 leagues from this great salt lake. A French league back in those days is estimated to have been between 2 and 3 miles, which would put this meeting somewhere in Nebraska or South Dakota in the Missouri River basin.

The mountains he describes are about 20 miles across and very high, not unlike the Wasatch range to the east of Salt Lake. He describes the lake as being 300 leagues, or up to 900 miles in circumference, and being fed with a river (perhaps the Jordan River?) in which the mouth thereof was about 5 miles wide.

Pierre de Smet's description recorded in Bishop Scanlan's book measures the circumference of Salt Lake at 300 miles, significantly smaller than Lahontan's, which begs the question: was the lake once much larger and was there a cataclysmic event that changed the landscape?

At any rate, we have in the late 1600s a thriving Indian nation (who are not the Utes) surrounding the Great Salt Lake, living in cement homes with no roofs, having thick beards and long hair, and being skilled in metal work and boat making. Here is Lahontan's description of the second tribe mentioned who lived upon the lake:

The Tahuglauk wear their beards two fingers breadth long; that their garments reach down to their knees; that they cover their heads with a sharp-pointed carp; that they always wear a long stick or cane in their hands, which is tipp'd [sic], not unlike what we use in Europe; that they wear a sort of boots upon their legs which reach up to the knee; that their women never shew themselves, which perhaps proceeds from the same principle that prevails in Italy and Spain. (pp. 126-27)

Why have we never heard of these Indians who grow thick beards and act and dress like Europeans? 

It might be because maps depicting that era looked a little different from our maps today and the Jesuits may have been attempting to keep this under wraps. 

For instance, California was depicted as an Island as early as 1530, completely disconnected from the mainland, which lends credence to the theory that a cataclysm drastically changed our landscape. And I don't mean the cataclysm that the Nephites experienced when Jacobugath was destroyed 2,000 years ago... I mean one much more recent. 

Here is a video produced by YouTuber Jon Levi where he shows you one of these maps and its depictions of where the Mozeemlek nation might've been:


I find it interesting that Bishop Scanlan wrote a history of the Catholic Church in Utah, published by the Knights of Columbus (a Jesuit subgroup), and was given charge of the Cathedral of the Madeleine. Is there some kind of connection between the two? Was he in fact assigned to write this Jesuit history of Utah to promote a certain narrative? And was he assigned an old-world building to help control this narrative?

I'll let you decide after we explore the construction narrative, the pipe organ, and the symbolism found on this incredible structure. 

The building was formerly known as St. Mary's Cathedral, and before it was "built" the Catholic patrons met in a smaller church constructed in 1871, called, wait for it, St. Mary's church. It is no longer standing today, but here is a picture of it:


Father Scanlan arrived in Salt Lake City in 1873 and actually lived in this church, getting by with only the "bare necessities of life." 

I guess Jesuit per diem wasn't so good in those days.

As the story goes, the Catholic population continued to grow and expand in Salt Lake City and soon this "little" building wasn't large enough to accommodate thousands of Catholic parishioners. 

The number eventually doubled from 5,000 to 10,000 and Scanlan, petitioning his Jesuit superiors for funds, purchased the lot that the "future" Cathedral would be "constructed" on for $35,000 on February 25, 1890.

He would only have to wait another two decades to finish building his dream cathedral..., unless of course, it was already there.

Two Churches?... I Don't Think So!

Do any of you remember the ridiculous movie Zoolander? Remember the scene at the end when Mugato, played by Will Ferrell, calls out Derick Zoolander (Ben Stiller) for only having one modeling look? 

He says... "Blue Steel, Ferrari, Le Tigre... their the same face! Doesn't anyone notice this I feel like I'm taking crazy pills!"

Zoolander piped back with, "One Look? I don't think so!"

Honestly, this is how it feels sometimes researching the history of conspiracy and cover ups. Sometimes the truth is so blatantly hidden in plain sight, but no one seems to notice or even care.

It's painfully obvious to me that the Cathedral of the Madeleine, and St. Mary's Cathedral and/or St. Mary's Church... are one and the same building.

If you scroll back up to the picture of the church built in 1871, the text beneath the image declares that this building served as Salt Lake City's first cathedral.

The picture came from the only book I could find on the history of the cathedral, as Wikipedia didn’t have much to say. The funny thing is that this book only has one paragraph dedicated to the actual construction of the building, consisting of a few short sentences without a single foot note or reference. 

The name of the book is The Story of the Cathedral of the Madeleine by Gary Topping, published in 2009. It is a short history of Bishop Scanlan and his predecessor Bishop Glass. I can sum up the entire book by saying that Scanlan built the cathedral and Glass decorated the interior.

I'll get to the "construction details" in a moment, for now just know that designating the old church house as a "cathedral" makes it very convenient for the narrative to fall in line with contemporary articles published by Salt Lake City newspapers.

All kinds of events transpired in this little "cathedral"; weddings, funerals, Christmas events, large masses, and other celebrations. A choir sang and an organist played; her name was Nora Gleason. 

Gleason became Bishop Scanlan's personal secretary sometime between 1893 and 1895. She is mentioned as the organist and choir director in about every newspaper article announcing an event at St. Mary's Cathedral. What is interesting is that articles before 1890 refer to St. Mary's as a church house, and articles after 1890 refer to St. Mary's as a cathedral.

So which is it? 

St. Mary's would not be renamed the Cathedral of the Madeleine until 1915, and the pipe organ isn't reported to have been completed until 1908.

So what organ was Gleason playing at St. Mary's Cathedral all during the 1890s? We are not told whether a smaller organ was used in the smaller church or if it had a larger pipe organ. We aren't given any detail at all. Newspapers in Salt Lake City reported the cornerstone ceremony for St. Mary's Cathedral (or the Madeleine as it now stands) in 1900 and the completion of the building in 1909, but we're not given much detail in between.

And again, as I stated in Part III, newspaper articles alone are not sufficient proof that an event actually transpired. 

We are given nothing about how many men it took to construct the building, nothing about the logistics of quarrying, cutting, and delivering of the sandstone, nothing about the initial excavation, nothing about the masonry and intricate carving on the exterior, and nothing about the fine woodwork in the interior. 

It's almost as if the building just appeared one day, with the people having already been gaslighted into believing the narrative, beholding the amazing structure and rationalizing that it had been there all along.

Another one Bites the Dust

As the story goes, Bishop Scanlan spent the 1890s drawing up plans for the new cathedral, plotting and planning every detail of its construction, and collecting money along the way. 

The money used to construct the cathedral supposedly came from the Pious Fund, established in 1697 by the Jesuits for the purpose of evangelizing in the American Southwest. Scanlan was the head of the Diocese of Salt Lake City (a diocese is a district over which a Catholic bishop has jurisdiction), and by 1904 he had collected nearly $300,000 from his superiors to go towards the construction of the cathedral.

Even though he had "already" drawn up the plans, Scanlan hired an architect to help him design and build the cathedral. His name was Carl M. Neuhausen, a German-born immigrant who settled in Utah in 1892. Neuhausen, we are told, designed a few other historic buildings in Salt Lake City, "including the Saltair pavilion, the Kearns mansion, the D.F. Walker Block, St. Anne's Orphanage, and the chapel at Holy Cross Hospital" (Gary Topping, The Story of the Cathedral of the Madeleine).

By the way, the Saltair will be the subject of my next post, and it is strange that Topping names Neuhausen as the architect because the structure was finished in 1893, only one year after this man arrived in Utah. Also, Wikipedia names Richard K.A. Kletting as the architect for the Saltair. These types of discrepancies are common in old building narratives.

Neuhausen and Scanlan, we are told, took their time constructing the building, moseying along and slowly upgrading plans as the project progressed. Topping describes it almost if construction of this massive edifice was merely a hobby, akin to slowly restoring a classic muscle car as means and time become available.

The word Topping uses to describe the pace of construction was leisurely

Strange indeed.

Topping also writes that Bishop Scanlan preferred to essentially "pay for the work as it went long" rather than to incur a large amount of debt by getting things done all at once. He also states that architect Neuhausen "revamped his blueprints from time to time as work progressed."

Stranger still is that Topping offers no information on the actual laborers that built the cathedral, unless of course we are suppose to believe that Scanlan and Neuhauser laid and carved every last sandstone block themselves. 

Here we come to the one paragraph that Topping wrote describing the construction process, and this is the only description of the actual construction I can find... anywhere:
It is difficult to imagine the effect the spectacle of the medieval stone building under construction in the midst of Salt Lake City might have had on observers, though perhaps their awe had been blunted a bit after having witnessed the construction of the city's other monumental ecclesiastical structure, the Mormon temple. For years the cathedral block on South Temple resembled a rock quarry more than a church site. A crane swung the huge stones upward to ever more vertigo-inducing heights, where they were transported to their proper place by carts on a railroad track. (Ibid, Kindle Edition, Loc. 389)

"Difficult to imagine" indeed, because... I don't believe it ever happened.

What I want to know is:

Whose "crane swung the huge stones upward to ever more vertigo-inducing heights"? What men properly set the stones that were hoisted up there? What delivery company hauled the sandstone to the jobsite? What quarrying company quarried the sandstone? What stone cutting company cut and scored the blocks? And what professional sculpture carved all the intricate detail, the statues of past saints, and the creepy gargoyles at the top?

And how on earth did they install a railroad track at "vertigo-inducing heights"?

How many total men worked on this project over the 9 years it was built? Where are their journal entries and diaries? Who was managing them? Why are there no photos of construction workers? 

Here is the only construction photo I can find on this cathedral, and there isn't a soul in sight:


The only cranes I see are those wooden ones on top that look like they have been photoshopped in, and where is the little railroad track mentioned by Topping?

This looks like a photoshopped picture of an existing building. Notice the vanilla skies, and notice how the building looks like it was literally cut off at the top? Also notice how the exterior facade designs and carvings are mostly finished. Wouldn't you build the entire structure first and then add the facade and carvings later? Who builds this way? 

Shouldn't we expect to see more of a skeleton frame of the building first before the exterior is finished? Something more akin to this picture of modern construction?


It seems very unlikely that they could finish such a monstrosity of a building in only nine years while going at such a "leisurely" pace. 

Especially since the architect Neuhausen had so much time to "revamp" the plans and add extra spires and towers that he hadn't planned on before. 

Furthermore, how were Scanlan and Neuhausen able to find and keep workers that were skilled in masonry? 

I am a business owner myself, and I know personally how difficult it is to find qualified employees and then to keep them. The fact that Scanlan was taking his sweet time with construction arouses my suspicions that if this account were actually true it would've been very difficult to keep help. 

People looking for work are generally interested in job security. They want something steady and consistent, not fleeting and intermittent. 

As Scanlan began each phase of construction he would've had to find new workers each time. This is an exhausting process, with no guarantees that each round of temporary workers possessed the same skills as the wave before. And truly, how many Utahns in this time period were actually master masons capable of such amazing stone work?

Like so many other building narratives, we are told that poor o'l Carl M. Neuhausen didn't live to see the completion of his marvelous creation. On September 22, 1907, Neuhauser "died suddenly" of an aneurism in his Salt Lake City home, as reported in the The Salt Lake Herald

If you've been researching old-world buildings, or watching My Lunch Break, you'll know that the elites, or the AI writing these narratives, use patterns to distinguish buildings built by this prior civilization, whoever they were. 

The two most common patterns are fire narratives and architects dying a year before or after finishing the project. As My Lunch Break always says, these are "nods" to other elites about where these buildings come from.

As the story goes, Neuhausen had nearly completed the building, leaving only the Norman towers and roof to be finished by his successor, Bernard R. Mecklenburg.

Architect Mecklenburg was another German, and interestingly enough his name is derived from the old Saxon word Mikilenburg, which means "big castle." All I could find under his name is a history of the House of Mecklenburg, a dynasty that ruled the Mecklenburg region of Germany up until 1918. 

This begs the question: why would this man, obviously wealthy and powerful, come to Salt Lake City to finish a mostly-completed building for the comparatively low wages of an architect? 

This makes no sense. Also concerning is the fact that there is literally no information on the immigration history of this man or his family. He appears to have just appeared on the scene and coincidentally hired by Scanlan at the perfect moment. Neither Wikipedia nor Gary Topping offer any background information on this anomalous character.

If you look up the House of Mecklenburg, you find a very interesting coat of arms.


Here we see a bull (taurus) on the left and a griffin (half-eagle, half-lion) on the right, mutually holding up the crown underneath several headless knights. 

The headless knight, as I covered in Part I, represents shadow government, but what I want to focus on here is the griffin. 

Griffins can be found carved on the exteriors of many old-world buildings throughout the earth. They were a powerful symbol to whoever the past civilization was that constructed these buildings.  

Griffins appear on the flag of the nation called Greater Tartary that we see on old maps of the world. Greater Tartary is now occupied by Russia.

Is it a coincidence that the coat of arms of the House of Mecklenburg also has a griffin on it?

Are the narrators trying to hide something in plain sight here? 

I'll leave further research on griffins up to you. But here are some very interesting videos from My Lunch Break where he briefly makes connections between Russia and Tartaria in the introductions of each one:





And here is a video where he found griffins on an administrative building in Oshkosh, Wisconsin:


Why Mary Magdalene and What is a Cathedral? 

The Catholic Church, through the clandestine work of the Jesuits, claims to have built nearly every cathedral in the world. If you begin investigating the narratives of these buildings, you find very similar stories.

My alternative theory is that the Jesuits first "founded" these buildings and repurposed them into religious sanctuaries. The Jesuits have been behind much of our false historical narrative (including the theory of the big bang), which leads me to believe that they rank very high among the controllers who make up the current New World Order.

And perhaps the major agenda behind the New World Order is the cover up of the true history of the Old World.

It seems strange that Bishop Glass would change the name of St. Mary's Cathedral to the Madeleine in light of how the Catholic Church viewed Mary of Magdala.

Not only has Mary Magdalene never been officially sainted by the Catholic Church, but in 591 Pope Gregory I labeled her as a prostitute and conflated her with the adulteress woman at the well and Mary of Bethany. The Church essentially combined the personage of Mary into three Biblical women - all of them sinners. 

It wasn't until 1969 that Mary Magdalene was given reprieve from the stigma of prostitution when Pope Paul VI officially removed her identification with Mary of Bethany and the "sinful woman" from the General Roman Calendar.

But old habits die hard. And it wasn't until 2016 that Pope Francis elevated her July 22nd memorial to a feast day in Catholic liturgy.

In Catholicism the process of canonizing historical Church fathers and other figures into "saints" is long and complicated. A person is first found a "servant of God," and later venerated, then beautified if there is evidence of at last one miracle in their life, and finally, if a second miracle is found, they are canonized. After canonization a person becomes an official saint.

All saints have feast days on the Catholic Calendar, which you can view here. But Mary Magdalene has still never been canonized or made a saint by the Catholic Church.

So why would a cathedral be named in honor of her in 1915, 54 years before Pope Paul VI would finally let her off the hook for being a prostitute? 

What bishop would name a cathedral after a prostitute?

No bishop of course. The original name of the Cathedral of the Madeleine in Salt Lake City was St. Mary's Cathedral, named after the virgin mother Mary, not Mary Magdalene.

I've searched through old newspaper articles and have not found a single reference to St. Mary's Cathedral as the "Madeleine" until the early 1920s. But this is still anomalous, because Mary Magdalene's status as a prostitute continued for the next fifty years.

Someone is lying to us.

Gary Topping, in the book I have referenced earlier, attempts his best speculation at why he thinks Mary Magdalene was chosen as the patron saint of St. Mary's Cathedral. He claims that Archbishop Joseph Alemany of San Francisco was the first to use the name Mary Magdalene in regard to the original adobe church house:
Archbishop Alemany himself came to dedicate it under the enduring patronage of St. Mary Magdalene in November of 1871. 

He backs up this claim by the following footnote:

Why St. Mary Magdalene? The answer can only be speculative, but it likely has something to do with the fact that her feast day, July 22, is the closest feast day to a major saint to July 24, which Utah celebrates as Pioneer Day to commemorate the entry of the first body of Mormon immigrants to Salt Lake Valley in 1847. (The Story of the Cathedral of the Madeleine, loc. 171, Kindle Edition)

He admits that he's speculating, and has zero evidence to back up this claim. Yet, Wikipedia has also adopted the same story and published it as part of the official narrative of the cathedral with the slight variation that it was Bishop Scanlan, not Alemany, who chose the name Mary Magdalene:

It is theorized that Bishop Scanlan chose Mary Magdalene as the patron saint of the Diocese of Salt Lake because her feast day is on July 22, two days before Pioneer Day, a celebration commemorating the arrival of Mormon Pioneers in Salt Lake Valley, so that Catholics would have something to celebrate alongside the region's dominant faith. (Wikipedia)

Wikipedia cites this paragraph with a reference to an article published in the Deseret News on August 19th of 2018.

There is absolutely zero contemporary evidence for any of these claims, which means they made it all up, just like the LDS Church made up Joseph Smith's polygamy.

In my opinion, this cathedral in Salt Lake City has existed for at least 500 years and maybe even 1000, and when Bishop Scanlan was assigned to head the diocese in 1871, he simply called it St. Mary's Cathedral.

My theory is based upon the fact that older cathedrals in Europe, built in the 10th and 11th centuries, have much of the same sacred geometry incorporated into the architecture of the building, which begs the question: why is this architecture also found in North America? 

Read to the end to find out more about these similarities.  

So what exactly is a cathedral?

The word cathedral comes from the Latin cathedra which means "a teacher's or professor's chair," or "easy chair." In Greek the word is kathedra, meaning "exalted seat occupied by men of imminent rank or influence."

As far as the Catholic definition goes, a cathedral is the cathedra of a bishop, or the central church of a diocese. 

But what if that definition is just a cover for something lying much deeper below the surface?

There are two words that make up cathedral, cata, meaning "down, below, underneath, a way, path, or track," and hedra meaning "face of a geometric solid."

Taking it a step further, we also see that cathedral is also a combination of cathode and hedral. A cathode is a negatively charged electrode, and the definition of hedral is "having many surfaces."

So let's put all this together: we have something underground, an electrical charge, and a geometric solid with many surfaces. 

In terms of a cathedral, are we now talking about some kind of machine or ancient technology? And if not a church, then what was the original purpose of these buildings and what is the role of geometry in their function?

Before we answer that let's explore cathodes and anodes for a moment. These are electrodes that allow electrical current to flow between positive and negatively charged ionic pathways. In the case of a battery cell that generates direct current, the cathode holds the positive charge, and is usually made with copper:



When the positive and negative circuit is completed with something like a light bulb, ions in the sulphate mixtures react allowing electrons to break free and travel from the anode to the cathode.

This is a simple explanation of electricity, or electric city.

Electric city? What am I talking about?

Obviously, I don't know how this works, I'm certainly no chemist, however, I can't help but wonder if there is something to a cathedral/cathode being a receiver of electricity?

Were all these buildings just individual pieces of an elaborate electric grid, or electric city? 

Do we really think that the intricate ornamentation on the spires below is all for aesthetics?


What you're looking at here is the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris. They say it took nearly 100 years to build in the 12th century.

When I look at these spires, I get the feeling that I'm looking at a beautiful form of technology, not mere artwork. 

The flower-shaped window you see above is common in many cathedrals throughout the world. Here it is below on the Cathedral of the Madeleine:


The same shape on two buildings, built half-way around the world and 700 years apart.

The shape has been called the rose window, and if you count there are twelve pedals and one center, making 13. This is symbolism for Jesus Christ (the sun) and His twelve disciples (the constellations). 

Is this just a coincidence? Do architects in different cultures and in different historical periods just copy each other? Or is something else going on?

What we are looking at here are geometric solids on many surfaces, or hedras and hedrals, which begs the question: did the Jesuits change the meaning of the word cathedral when they annexed and repurposed these buildings? 

I most certainly believe they did.

Things to Act and Things to be Acted Upon

Lehi taught and Nephi recorded a profound scientific proof within the text of the Book of Mormon: the concept of polarity. 

Polarity is so crucial to this physical realm that if it were not present there could be no creation at all. Lehi declared that if there was no opposition, we would not exist at all, neither God, nor the earth, and all things would have vanished away.

Lehi took this concept even deeper, declaring as a subset of the opposition of all things that there exists within all creation "both things to act and things to be acted upon."

The concept of opposition is easy to visualize in the model of the battery cell that we briefly discussed above. Ions in the sulphate mixture react when the electrical circuit is complete, electrons break free and always seek the positive terminal. 

In other words, opposites always attract. This polarity creates usable power, a human good that enhances our lives. 

In the case above the electrons are the actors and the cathode is the device that is acted upon. The end result is the lighting of the bulb. 

But what if the roles of things that act and things that are acted upon are interchangeable?

In the case of an automobile battery, a reversal of the polarity allows us to recharge the battery after it exhausts its reactive ions. The alternators in our vehicles do this for us and we never have to think about it, until our batteries die for good and we have to replace them.  

What does this tell us about the nature of reality? Actors and non-actors are not fixed, and depending on the stimulus, their roles can be reversed. 

So what does all of this have to do with sacred geometrical shapes on the solid surfaces of cathedrals?

To answer that question we have to explore another concept: the phenomenon of vibrational frequencies. 

The easiest way to explain this concept is to use the example of a guitar string. When two guitars are in tune and a single string is plucked on one guitar, the corresponding string on the other guitar will also vibrate and emit the same tone. 

This is known as resonance, and it also works in reverse. It doesn't matter which guitar is plucked first, because if they are in tune, the other guitar will always resonate back. 

This simple example explains a lot about the nature of reality, which is more about vibration than what we actually see. 

An alternative doctor from Japan proved that vibrational frequency can create geometrical shapes in water molecules during the 1990s. His name was Dr. Masaru Emoto, and his very important work has been shrugged off as "pseudoscience" by the scientific establishment.

He published a book in 2005 entitled The Hidden Messages in Water, in which he shared the results of experiments he conducted using water and music. Dr. Emoto would expose water to different types of human intention, whether through music, prayer, or just spoken words, then he would freeze it and observe the crystals under a microscope. Here are some examples of what he found:


Dr. Emoto proposed that it was the human intention in the words, prayers, or music that contributed to the geometric shapes in the water molecules. His research is very fascinating when you consider the phenomenon of star forts. 

Star forts can be found all over the world, and like the buildings under consideration in this blog series, were also said to have been built during the 18th and 19th centuries. The official narrative is that they were built as strategic military fortresses, but this doesn't make much sense, because when you look at them you find that with all the different angels they would've been quite difficult to defend against encroaching forces. Here is a typical one:


As you can see, the shape is similar to what Dr. Emoto found in positively influenced water molecules. Also notice that the fort is surrounded by water. This is very typical.  

Another interesting fact about star forts is that they can be found on the earth's natural ley lines. These are lines that connect at certain geometric points all over the earth. 

It is almost if these "forts" were laid out in a type of power-grid form. I believe they had a much more significant function than what they are telling us.

If you're interested, visit this website to explore all the star forts throughout the world.

Dr. Emoto's research is important because the human body is made mostly of water, and depending on the vibrational frequencies we are exposed to in our environment, the structure of that water can be altered, creating either health or dis-ease.

He found that music has a profound effect on water, and can produce either distorted or perfectly symmetrical shapes, which brings us to the pipe organs we find in cathedrals.

Along with electromagnetism and sacred geometry, music is a major component of human health and well being. In fact, sound itself may be the sole creative force in the universe. 

Before There was Light, There was Sound

In restoration scripture we have two accounts of the creation of the earth, one from Moses and the other from Abraham. In both records, the first act of the Gods in initiating the process of creation was simply to speak.

God's voice was the catalyst that sparked the creation of this earth, and when the light heard the sound, it obeyed:
And I, God, said, Let there be light; and there was light. (Genesis 2:3, RE)

In the act of creation, sound precedes light. Sound, in the form of the spoken word, is also the method of how God ordains priests in his Holy Order, as explained by Moses in the Joseph Smith translation of the book of Genesis:

And it was delivered unto men by the calling of his own voice... (Genesis 7:18, RE)

As you'll recall, it was the sound of Enoch's voice and the language he used that enticed the elements of the earth to protect the city of Zion in his day. Similarly, it was the words of Nephi that commenced a famine and diverted a war among the people of Nephi. 

Enos evoked the attention of God by raising his voice high toward heaven, and it was the cries of the brother of Jared that allowed him to see the Lord and to light the sea vessels for his journey to the Americas.

Are we seeing a pattern here?

The science of how sound affects the physical realm is called cymatics, a term coined by a Swiss physician named Hans Jenny. 

Sound frequency is measured in hertz, or cycles per second.

Certain music, like rock n roll, has a frequency of 440 Megahertz, which actually disharmonizes our bodies and can leave us sick, angry, or agitated. (This is bad news for me because I'm a guitar-playing rocker.) Classical music, on the other hand, has a frequency that resonates more naturally with our bodies and minds. 

Secret combinations use this knowledge of sound frequency to control us and keep us sick and dependent on their corrupt systems, which is one reason I believe they have endeavored to cover up the true history of cathedrals.

Cathedrals use a combination of light, sound, electromagnetism, and geometrical shapes to create an atmosphere of love and healing. 

The rose window that we commonly see on the front of cathedrals is similar to the flower of life. It looks something like this:

This is the shape of a human embryo when it has divided into 8 cells through the process of cell division. Although it appears as if there are only 7 cells, on an actual image of an embryo the 8th is hidden directly behind the center cell. 

It has been said that the six outer cells represent the six days of creation, the 7th represents the sabbath day of rest, and the 8th represents eternity. 


These shapes can raise the vibrations of people, plants, and animals around them, but they can also be created in a water medium (like human blood) by sound frequencies. 

Another way to say this is as follows:

Sacred geometrical shapes create vibration, and vibration creates sacred geometrical shapes. (Things to act and things to be acted upon.) 

Here are some interior photos of the Cathedral of the Madeleine, but keep in mind that much of the over-the-top detail was added later by the Jesuits, including stained glass:




As the story goes, the pipe organ pictured in the first image above was completed in 1908, yet we are given no details about its construction. We are not told who designed it, where the materials came from, how long it took, or who the skilled laborers were who put it together, let alone how it was installed at those dizzying heights.

Apparently, our civilization was really good at building elaborate pipe organs in the historic past, especially 100 to 200 years ago:







This was all for a religious congregation to sing boring church hymns on any given Sunday?

I don't think so.

I believe this is healing technology. 

According to researchers in the field of cymatics, a tone of 528 Mhz is optimal for creating healing tones and frequencies. Could it be that the civilization who built these cathedrals and pipe organs tuned them to resonate with healing frequencies and offered this free to all within their society?

Did people meet in these sanctuaries to rest and recharge their organs while listening to healing tones?

Can you imagine our secret-combination-ridden society offering free energy and free healing services? Just having access to these two services alone would destroy their chokehold on our modern civilization.

Are you beginning to see why our modern controllers have endeavored so vigorously to rewrite our history and destroy the evidence of the Old World?

Can you imagine the implications of free energy and healing modalities that debunk the narrative of modern medicine?

After all, what would secret combinations be if they weren't built up by our dependence and our money?

Orgone, Ascension, and Sacred Marriage

The term "orgone energy" was coined by Wilhelm Reich, an Austrian doctor who invented a contraption known as the cloud buster during the 1940s.

Orgone energy, now written off as pseudoscience, is another reference to atmospheric energy that exists in the ether. We are literally surrounded by vibrational frequencies that exist as a consequence of this energy. This energy exists in our organs, in organic food, in pipe organ music... just think of all the words that begin with the prefix org.

Reich's cloud buster was a weather-manipulating device that used a combination of metal pipes and a vortex of water. It functioned by concentrating the orgone energy in the metal pipes and pointing them toward the sky. 

Although Reich was discredited and eventually arrested by the FBI, who disappeared all of his research... there is something to this concept of water and pipes.

The ancient builders of the Old World may have used a similar technology. When you get into the history of cathedrals, you find that many of them contained underground cisterns meant for collecting and storing rain water. 

These cisterns were also used in castles for temperature regulation and air ventilation. Limestone was often used as a construction material because of its ability to filter and purify water. Here is what one of these cisterns looks like:

Recalling our battery diagram from earlier in this post, one has to wonder if the water works in conjunction with the pillars and the spires of the building to create some kind of power source or natural battery.

Taking it a step further, perhaps the water functions as some kind of medium that mimics the human body. For instance, our cells also function as a type of battery using electrolytes like sodium, magnesium, and calcium to create chemical reactions allowing water to carry nutrients into the energy centers of our cells.

Regardless, the video below offers some interesting connections between cisterns and cathedrals:


Just when I thought I was ready to move on from cathedrals, a friend pointed out a fascinating book written about Chartres Cathedral in France, built around 1200 A.D.

I have since learned that cathedrals as healing centers is only the tip of the iceberg. Like star forts, cathedrals were also built on ley lines where telluric (earth) energy intersects on geometric points. These crossroads are areas of high vibrational frequency, and when one enters a structure built over such a place it is much easier for the mind to relax and focus on spiritual things. 

When one walked through the entrance of the building the mind would enter an altered state; even the word altar was once spelled alter, as in mind-altering.

And speaking of entrances, the southeast doorway on the Chartres Cathedral was considered an ascension portal, commemorating the resurrection of Jesus Christ. 

I believe that the doorway was designed for this symbolism long before the Jesuits and the Catholic Church got ahold of these buildings, and I believe whoever built these structures were true Christians. Here is the southeast side of the Chartres Cathedral:


The three doorways symbolize the Tree of Jesse, or the royal bloodline of Jesus Christ. The middle doorway, or ascension portal, symbolizes Christ's triumph over death and resurrection. When one enters this doorway, they are symbolically entering the path, or "the way" established by Christ.

Remember, the Book of Mormon is an ascension text, and Nephi tells us how to enter the path, where no man but Christ guards the gate. Nephi's life is an example of how to enter the straight and narrow path and how to strive to become like Christ. 

Joseph Smith taught a similar doctrine in the Lectures on Faith. In order to be saved, we must be exactly like the prototype of the saved man: Jesus Christ. Of course this is impossible to accomplish in this life, as Joseph Smith once stated, but the point of the Gospel is to enter into the initiatory path that eventually leads to us becoming just like Him.

Here we can see the similar doorways on the front of the Cathedral of the Madeleine:



The architecture of cathedrals is immensely more complex than I had previously imagined. Sacred geometry and even gematria (giving numerical value to language) is employed in the consideration of every angle and every shape of the building. Even the numerical values of the music scale are incorporated into the structure. As the author of the book I mentioned above states:
In essence, the building is a mirror of the laws of nature, and when one understands these laws one understands the mind of God. (Chartres Cathedral: The Missing or Heretic Guide, Freddy Silva, p. 20)

If you look at many of these cathedrals on google earth, you often find a cruciform shape on the top of the building. This was not a symbol for the death of Jesus Christ as many have supposed, but rather an emblem signifying a sacred center, going all the way back to Egypt. 

God's symbolism for His mysteries is found all throughout nature, even in simple cruciferous vegetables, whose four pedals resemble a cross. The true meaning of "as above, so below," is God's parable for teaching us truth through the simplest of means:

And behold, all things have their likeness, and all things are created to bear record of me... (Genesis 4:9, RE)

And speaking of things having their likeness, some of the architectural designs on these cathedrals and other old-world structures even mimic the microscopic exoskeletons of ancient organisms found in silica:


 

One could literally spend years studying the architecture of cathedrals, but an important point to make here is that when these buildings were first constructed the interiors were empty, totally devoid of the Catholic ornamentation that litters them today. 

The Jesuits added these things later, which is why I believe that the account of Bishop Glass (Scanlan's predecessor) decorating the interior of the Cathedral of the Madeleine is 100 percent accurate. 

According to an article by Catholic activist Bernice Maher Mooney, after Bishop Scanlan built the cathedral he ran out of money and couldn’t afford to decorate the bare walls that consisted of nothing but white plaster. Here are some photos of some of what Bishop Glass did later:







This is another clue that the Catholic Church did not build this building, because Old World Cathedrals were deliberately bereft of interior decoration.

Such decorative clutter would've been considered anathema to the ancients who constructed the buildings, as they viewed the edifices as places where one's mind could be cleared and opened up to receive the things of God.

Before I end, there is one more final point to make. Much about the architecture of cathedrals is symbolic of the sacred marriage between male and female. God once stated that it was not good for man to be alone, and that teaching has been incorporated into the very building materials used in the construction of many old world buildings.

Even the stone itself contains properties symbolizing male and female. For instance, igneous rock like granite formed by liquid magma has male energy, and sedimentary rock such as limestone and sandstone possess female energy.

According to Freddy Silva:

When water percolates through limestone it creates a phenomenon called adsorption, whereby an electrical charge is generated in the surrounding landscape. A small change in a local electromagnetic field is all that is required to induce a heightened state of awareness in a person. (Ibid, p.17)

Thus, cathedrals contain much female energy which is why they are often named after Saint Mary; or after the French term Notre Dame which means "our lady."

Even the design of the spires on the Chartres Cathedral represent the symbolic marriage between the sun and the moon:


According to Silva:
Notice how the twin spires are of different heights. The taller, left tower represents the Sun, its spire a hexagon, the geometry symbolizing the values of this combustible, masculine star. 

The shorter, right tower represents the Moon. Being the mirror of the light of the sun, its qualities are deemed to be feminine. The original spire was slightly taller, octagonal, and the choice of geometry was deliberate. (Ibid, p. 32)

If you approach these old world buildings with an open mind, you will discover that they possess technology and symbolism far beyond the scope of our present civilization. This should inspire questions in us such as: who really built these structures and to what ends were they built?

In addition to hailing from a technologically advanced civilization, were these architects also followers of Christ's true Gospel and were they privy to revelations that laid out how such structures were to be built?

We will continue to pursue these questions as this series progresses. Join me next time as we cover the history of Utah’s iconic Saltair and explore the mysterious connection between fire and salt.

Bonus: The Brigham Young Connection

Just when I thought I had the story of the Madeleine all figured out, a friend of mine stumbled onto an interesting little tidbit about how Brigham Young was involved with the Catholic priest who came to Utah before Lawrence Scanlan: his name was Father Edward Kelly.

Father Kelly was sent by Archbishop Joseph Alemany in 1866 to establish a Catholic presence in Salt Lake City. The first thing he did was purchase a small adobe building on Temple street close to the "future" site of the Cathedral of the Madeleine. However, there was some kind of legal dispute involving the property, and both parties sought arbitration from Mr. Territorial governor himself: Brigham Young.

The only description of this obscure event is recorded in a little book entitled, A Brief History of the Church in Utah, by Rev. Denis Kiely, (Vicar General of the diocese of Salt Lake). This booklet was published on July 22 of 1900, and was signed and vouched for by Bishop Scanlan.

(Notice the date of July 22 is the same day on which Mary Magdalene's feast day is celebrated. Coincidence?).

Rev. Kiely describes the matter between Brigham and Father Kelley as follows:
In 1876 Father Kelly made two visits to Utah. During his second visit he purchased the lot on which the present church stands. In 1876 Father Kelley made a brief visit to the former scene of his labors and with the writer called on Brigham Young, who received them most cordially and expressed his regrets that he, Father Kelly, did not continue his ministrations in Utah, and before his departure presented him with a new book containing his autograph. The friendly feeling shown by Brigham Young was sincere and it was mutual too, for Father Kelly told his companion, the present writer, that on different occasions when he called on Brigham Young he was always befriended.

After securing the lot, purchased for the church edifice, it was found there was a flaw in the title. The title to the property purchased in good faith was to be legally contested. Father Kelly told the contestant that he wanted no legal proceedings: that he bought the property in good faith and had paid the market price for it, and would abide by the decision of Brigham Young. As a compromise it was so agreed. They called on Brigham Young and his decision was that clear title should be given to the Father and all adverse claims should be surrendered. This decision was final and a perfect title to the property was secured. (p. 4)

Alright hold the phone here... Why is Brigham arbitrating in a property dispute involving a church house? Was this his right as territorial dictator, or was something else afoot? And why was he so friendly with these "gentile" Catholics? I thought Brigham didn't like nonmember outsiders?

Here is what I think really happened: 

Brigham Young had control of the already existing cathedral, not some adobe hut, and as per his deal with the Jesuits, handed it over to the Catholic Church. Father Kelly and Bishop Scanlan had to make it look like a legal dispute so that Brigham could get involved and cede over the property. We are told nothing about this supposed "contestant" who claimed there was a flaw in the title. If this event really happened wouldn't we at least have a name?

If the property matter doesn't get your eyebrow to raise, this next entry in Kiely's book most certainly will:

On another occasion Father Kelly received a written notice directing him to leave the city... The next day he repaired to the office of Brigham Young and handed him the notice. It was read carefully and after pausing a few minutes, Brigham said: "Father Kelly, that was not written by my people and I can prove it by the quality of the paper used. You remain and I will see that you shall not be disturbed and that not even a hair in your head shall be touched."

He did remain and said that the explanation made as to the source of the note was most plausible... The charge has no foundation in fact: was never represented as such by the priest himself. In fact he considered himself entirely safe and looked upon Brigham Young as a devoted and sincere friend. His first services were held in the old Assembly hall which, as a mark of courtesy, was placed at his disposal. (pp. 4-5)

This is more than just a friendship. Brigham Young, the most powerful man in Utah, is offering his protection to a Catholic priest... a gentile?

In Winter Quarters Brigham had told the saints to "curse every Gentile who should attempt to settle here' with sickness, rottenness, and death..."

Yet in 1876 he is offering them his protection and letting them use the "old Assembly hall" to have church services in?

I'm not buying it. I believe this was a deal between Brigham and the Jesuits, made when Pierre de Smet first agreed to lead him to the Great Basin where he found an abandoned city.

Oh, and Father Kelly messed up when he called the building the "old Assembly hall," because construction on the Assembly Hall would not begin until 1877, a full year after the event described above. I believe that the Assembly Hall was already standing on Temple Square before Brigham arrived, and I'm planning on covering that building as well in future posts. 

But Kelly's slipup reveals that sometimes there are just too many details to keep straight when participating in a giant cover up. According to the official narrative, the structure that was razed to make way for the Assembly Hall was known as the "Old Tabernacle."

So which is it Father Kelly, the Assembly Hall or the Tabernacle?     

Postscript: Interesting Videos On Cathedrals











This is the Place VI: Somethin’s Fishy about Saltair

  Previously: The Mystery of the Madeleine There are some big problems with the "official" story of Utah's Saltair Resort, and...