This is the Place III: Columbia vs Moroni

 Previously: Brigham, Boston, and the Black-Robed Jesuit

Welcome readers to Part III. Thank you for joining me in my quest to discover the truth about Brigham Young and Salt Lake City.

In this and subsequent posts I want to take a good look at some of the historical buildings in Utah with construction dated in the 19th century. 

This includes the non-Mormons, who, according to the narrative, built some amazing structures almost in competition to the Salt Lake Temple. 

This is what we are told anyway, and when we start looking into some of the construction histories of these buildings, we begin to find some strange anomalies - things that just don't add up. 

Some readers may experience some cognitive dissonance in what follows; the idea that historically famous buildings actually existed in Salt Lake City prior to 1847. This discovery can be a paradigm-changing mind-bender. 

The mind will hurl counter-arguments about all the thousands of people who lived and worked on these structures, their journal entries, the Indians who were acquainted with the Mormons, and famous mountain men like Jim Bridger who explored Salt Lake Valley before the Mormons ever showed up.

If buildings already existed in Salt Lake valley before Brigham Young arrived and said "this is the place," then surely Jim Bridger and the Native Americans who lived in the Great Basin would have told us, right?

Well, they didn't mention anything so we can safely believe in the official narrative. Whew! Now I can end this post.  

But wait. When we actually begin to look at the details surrounding the construction of historical buildings we notice logical inconsistencies, and this becomes our window into a new paradigm. That's why we need to start taking a good look at the buildings today, and working backwards. 

Buildings are a tangible, physical key to the past: ornamental relics beckoning us to investigate them, standing independent of the communities who claim to have built them.  

I'm not asking you to believe anything that I write about, in any of the 45 articles I've written on this blog. 

This is my journey, and I'm just sharing it with you. All I'm hoping is that you might consider the things I'm discovering with an open-mind.

The thing about history is that it is always someone else's story, told by complete strangers, in a past epoch. 

We weren't there, we didn't witness history unfolding first-hand, and consequently, we must rely upon the writings of others to learn about what happened in the past. 

That makes us utterly dependent upon the imperfect words of other mortals... who were themselves imperfect and riddled with sin - mortals who may have been lying, exaggerating, omitting details, or were even forced to write something down that was untrue. 

And even after something is written, there is always the possibility that someone else with a different agenda has changed or manipulated it. 

For those of us who don't believe that Joseph Smith was ever a polygamist this is something we are becoming all-too familiar with - the revisionist touch.  

If an organization can delete and rewrite an entire counter-narrative of one man's complete fidelity to his wife, then what else can they erase and rewrite? 

I'd say the possibilities are endless. 

According to the Book of Mormon, there is only one way to know if something is true, and that is by the power of the Holy Ghost. This was Moroni’s last message to us, the son of a prophet-historian.

Moroni didn’t say you will know the truth of all things by studying ancient records, or by reading a book authored by some credentialed historian, or by reading someone’s journal, or old newspaper articles, affidavits, or court documents.

He simply said “by the power of the Holy Ghost ye may know the truth of all things.”

That’s it. Your only guide to learning truth in this realm is through the Holy Ghost... the Spirit of Truth.

Moroni promised us that one day "all things which are hid must be revealed upon the housetops." This includes the true history of the world, and I believe it will be nothing like what we have been taught.

In my opinion, our history has been entirely rewritten, with some names, dates, and events being completely fabricated. However, you'll notice a pattern of symbolism woven throughout the narrative, and this reveals who is behind the curtain directing society.

The Luciferian controllers can't help but leave their symbolism imprinted territorial markings everywhere they have been, and ground zero for this symbolism is the fraternity of Freemasonry. 

It is there that we can begin to get some answers. And it is no coincidence that high-ranking Masons refer to themselves as "Master Masons" - claiming to build buildings that they never actually built.

This is why the first building I'm going to take you through is the Salt Lake City and County Building, built by Masons between 1891 and 1894.

Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past. (George Orwell, 1984)

Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture repainted, every statue, street, and, building renamed, every date altered. And the process continues day by day... Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right. (George Orwell, 1984)

History is a pack of lies about events that never happened told by people who weren't there. (George Santayana, American philosopher, 1863-1952)

We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false. (William Casey, CIA Director, 1981)

The first step in liquidating a people is to erase its memory. Destroy its books, its culture, its history. Then have someone write new books, manufacture a new culture, invent a new history. Before long the nation will begin to forget what it is and what it was. (Milan Kundera, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting)

Build Me a Building

The Salt Lake City and County Building is the perfect place to start our study, as it mimics the narratives of so many county and city hall structures throughout the nation. These narratives share some common themes:

1. The buildings seem to always be the product of some type of architectural competition.
2. There are anomalies surrounding the architects, i.e., they often mysteriously die before the structure is completed, and/or they are said to have completed other projects simultaneously that are sometimes several hundred miles away, or they are only known for completing one project. 
3. The edifices are massive, thrown up hastily in 1-3 years, always going over budget (often during panics or depressions), and seemingly disproportionate to the populations of the cities building them. 
4. Contractors are rarely named, and when they are they seem to be strangely absent from any other building projects. Logistics of how many construction workers it took, where they were housed, what they ate, sanitation and hygiene, water needs, and what they were paid are glossed over or entirely omitted in historical accounts. Sources of feed, water, and corralling for construction work horses used are also missing from these stories. 
5. Canyons and quarries are often named for local sources of rock and stone, yet details of how materials were formed into multi-ton stone block and then hauled to the job site and perfectly cut are rarely included.
6. Wintery conditions and muddy spring dirt roads don't seem to be a problem in these narratives, as there is no mention of construction slowing down in the winter or spring months.
7. Logistics of how massive sandstone or granite blocks were loaded onto wagons or train rails are missing from all the narratives, along with the number of trips required to deliver the material, or how the blocks were hoisted upwards of 300 feet on some of the tallest structures. 
8. Despite the widespread use of photography in the 1800s, available construction photographs of these buildings are rare, and always show the structures completely or mostly finished. Anomalies in the skies are also common.
9. One of the most common themes is that these 19th century buildings have a history of being completely destroyed by fire (even though they are built out of brick and stone) and then being rebuilt in record time (like one year). The city of San Francisco supposedly burnt down six times in about 10 years. 
10. Descriptions of the preparatory ground excavation are usually completely omitted from the narrative. In the 1800s, foundations were dug out with shovels and pick axes, with dirt and rock being hand-shoveled into wagons and hauled away. On some buildings, like the Salt Lake Temple, foundations were dug out as deep as forty feet - a stunning feat by pioneer men with only hand shovels, and without modern excavators.  

When we're spoon fed these narratives, we should be asking questions like the following:  

How long did each trip take from the quarry canyon to the construction site? 

Were muddy or snowy roads even an issue? 

How much did construction slow down in the winter months? 

If there were no local quarries then who shipped the stone and heavy construction materials, and where did it all come from? 

What subcontractors were involved in the process? 

Who was performing maintenance on wagon wheels and train rails? 

Where were the workers living during the construction, and purchasing food and clothing? 

Who was training them in advanced stone cutting and sculpting methods? 

Sandstone blocks on the Salt Lake City-County building range in weight between 1 and 2 tons. Power tools were not invented until 1895, which means stone masons were using hand tools, i.e., hammers, chisels, and wedges to cut perfect blocks out of raw sandstone. 

How long did it take to produce even one 1 to 2 ton block? How was the block hoisted onto wagons or train cars used for shipping? And is it feasible that artists were able to hand-chisel all the ornate and intricate designs on the exterior of the building?

How long would that realistically take?

And of course we must ask who financed the project. How were funds appropriated and distributed? Were taxes or bonds raised? Were donations from wealthy businessmen used? Or perhaps federal grants? What does the official census at the time say about the population base? And why were such massive structures needed merely for politicians to meet in?

The list of questions is literally endless. And no narrative endeavors to answer them all. Consequently, we are always left with more questions than answers. 

Most curiously, these buildings can be found all over the nation (and the world for that matter) in the exact same architectural styles, ornamented with the same intricate exterior carvings, and adorned with the same mystical symbolism. 

How did all the 19th century architects coordinate such a building bonanza? And why were Americans in the 1800s adorning their administrative buildings and cathedrals with griffins, gargoyles, dragons, sea monsters, cupids, sun symbols, and pagan goddesses like Columbia?

Especially in the American West. I mean, were pioneers and cowboys really into gothic and occult symbols?

I suppose it’s a possibility. But I'm just asking questions here. 

Below is the Salt Lake City and County Building:

I took this photo myself. I was so intrigued with these buildings in Utah that I took a trip just to visit them. 

This thing looks like a castle. The detail on the exterior alone is mind blowing. The 256 ft. tall clock-tower is adorned with a statue of the goddess Columbia, and the clock itself weighs a whopping 2500 pounds. 

How did they lift this up to such a height? Unfortunately, they don't tell us.

But what they do tell us is a haphazard tale of how this building came to be, with no links to original documents or primary sources.

Wikipedia is a major source of background information on all these public buildings. If you scroll down and look at the references they use you will find secondary sources only. Primary sources are rare or nonexistent. 

Wikipedia, in my opinion, is a CIA black ops disinformation campaign, and mostly controlled now by AI. And sometimes, the AI makes mistakes, or it uses patterns to tell the history, often repeating names over and over again in the same narrative, which is an obvious tip off. 

Remember, Satan is obligated by some unwritten eternal law to hide his lies in plain sight, and to reveal his plans (called revelation of the method) for the world, both past and future, even if only in parable form. He is not new at this, he's been around the block, doing things that he has seen done on other worlds. 

And all of this world is a stage - his stage for his story. HISTORY is his-story.  

As the story goes, the Salt Lake city-county building was a much needed edifice for the municipal government and state legislative body to hold meetings in. From 1866 to 1891, they had met in the county building below. This Greek revival building was supposedly

 finished in only two years, a 

pretty decent accomplishment for the 1860s, especially from a group of immigrants who had shown up with nothing but hand carts to a bare land, and lived in adobe huts only a decade and a half earlier. 

In 1890, the entire population of Utah territory was around 200,000, with Salt Lake City claiming about 58,000 of those residents. 

Utah would not even receive statehood until 1896, so it seems very odd that city and county councils created to serve a population of less than 60,000 would need such an oversized building to meet in. 

The first building pictured above seemed to have been just fine, especially when you consider the fact that 95% of the rooms in the Salt Lake City-County building have never been used for meetings. 

Why all the space? Why all the largess? We are just not told. 

The next thing they tell us is that there was controversy surrounding the construction plans of the building. It was the non-Mormon "Liberal Party" against the Mormon-backed "People's Party." And of course the building was supposed to rival the architecture of the Salt Lake Temple - even up to the top mast statue of Columbia competing against the angel Moroni. 

Sounds ridiculous right? What city council would even care about such a thing? I mean, would the average city councilman of the 19th century even know or care about who the goddess Columbia was? And how would they get the citizens of Salt Lake City to agree to having their taxes raised to fund such a monstrosity, especially since they already had a decent and structurally beautiful city hall building? Again, we are not told.

The word "controversy" in the Wikipedia narrative should warrant our attention. Is this the Adversary's way of inserting a clue with a kernel of truth? The Wikipedia page says the construction of the building was "riddled with controversy." Is there a riddle to be solved here? Was it controversial because the building was not built by our civilization?

Let's continue with his-story. It gets even more ridiculous.

In February of 1890, after the Liberal Party won the majority vote, ground was broken and by November the foundation had already been laid. No mention, of course, about who the contractor was or how many men were working on it, or how they had excavated the hole for foundation stones with hand shovels, horses, and carts. 

Then suddenly, for "nebulous reasons," says Wikipedia, construction was halted, and after five months of deliberation moved to an entirely new location: from State street to Washington Square, where the building remains today. 

The "nebulous reasons" had to do with the controversy between the two political parties, the one blaming the other for wasting constituent's tax dollars. (And whatever happened to that first fully completed foundation, excavated with hand shovels, and already laid in with multi-ton stones set in deeply to support an immense building?)

Essentially, we are told, some new people were elected to office and decided to blame the liberals for wasting public funds, but the conservatives who took control eventually decided to go ahead with the project, incurring an even bigger burden on the tax payers. 

Again, ridiculous, but maybe the word nebulous was inserted for a different reason, perhaps it was a clue that those telling the story are of a nebulous nature? The Adversary again revealing a morsel of truth within a mountain of lies. 

So who designed the building? A fellow by the name of C.E. Apponyi, one of five contestants who had entered into a friendly architectural competition hosted by the city government. His draft drew the winning plan, but curiously, the drawing was lost to history. In fact, no preparatory drawing of this Romanesque building is known to exist.

And down the memory hole it goes. 

This poor Apponyi not only lost his only drawing of the building, but was fired by the city when it halted construction at the original location on State Street. I guess they thought he just didn't have what it took to get the job done. But according to the narrative he also designed a major theatre in British Columbia and a state legislature building in Colorado. Regardless, the Utahns evidently had no use for him. 

We are told that planning and construction deliberations had ended sometime in 1891, and construction began in November (going into winter) after the new location was chosen and a new architectural firm was hired. This firm, torturously named Monheim, Bird, and Proudfoot, was evidently a one-hit-wonder, forming a partnership just to enter into the new competition hosted by the Salt Lake City Council. Their drawing won the contest, but not without a little more controversy. 

Yes, there is that word again. 

The Joint Committee's decision triggered yet more political drama, with the Salt Lake Herald even weighing in and calling the new contest "a pretentious fraud."

Pretentious fraud? Wait a minute here. Do we have yet another clue from the story tellers? Is the entire his-story of this building nothing but a pretentious fraud?

I'll let you decide. 

Do we have the original drawing created by Monheim, Bird, and Proudfoot? Nope. Not a trace of it.

It probably died with Monheim, who literally died only one year after construction began on the building. It cannot be overstated that in so many narratives involving 19th century Romanesque, Gothic, Greco-Roman, Colonial, Baroque, Beaux Arts, Victorian, and Neoclassical edifices, the architects mysteriously die before seeing the project finished. This, I believe, is AI-created code language for old world buildings, built by a previous civilization. 

The contractor hired to construct the second version of the Salt Lake City and County building was selected in September of 1892, even though his bid was only the third lowest, coming in at $377,978. This number was modest when compared to the final cost when the building was completed, at well over $900,000.

The contractor's name was John H. Bowman, and after searching his name in an old newspaper archive I discovered several articles about him. The strange thing is that none of them mention any details about the massive stone building construction that only took him 2.5 years. There was no mention of the elaborate stone work, art carvings, or symbolism on the building.

The majority of the contemporary articles about John H. Bowman are about his lawsuits with Salt Lake City. Apparently, they refused to pay him for the total amount contracted and he spent considerable time in litigation against them. In addition, there was another suit brought by his competitors who were miffed that he was awarded the job despite bidding higher than them. 

That's it. Nothing but drama with o'l John H. Bowman. He was apparently not an honest man, he forged a signature for the bond that was supposed to cover the County Building (as reported in The Salt Lake Herald, March 23, 1892).

I did find an obituary of when he died in 1921. You can view it here. 

The obituary headliner reads as follows:

J.H. Bowman Dies From Pneumonia: Was Contractor for City and County Building, U.A.C. Edifices.

What is strange to me is that besides the limited information in the newspaper archive and this obituary, I can't find anything else on this man.

Even stranger are the construction details. As recorded in the Salt Lake City Herald, by May of 1893 Bowman was neglecting to pay his subcontractors because he was out of money, claiming that Salt Lake City hadn't paid the contract out in full. 

As a result, the City and County Joint Committee became the general contractor and started paying subs directly, while still allowing John to supervise the project. Apparently, this is how the total cost escalated to over $900K.

This makes no sense. No general contractor would ever agree to such a scenario and stay on as "supervisor" for another 1.5 years. After the project was finished in 1894, the city was supposed to pay him a percentage for the remaining job after subs and materials were paid out, but as of 1897 he was still in litigation against them (as reported in The Daily Tribune). 

And we're still not told anything about the logistics of getting sandstone, lumber, and other materials to the job site. 

The name of the court case was John H. Bowman vs the Salt Lake City and Salt Lake County. When you click on the link to view agency history, it takes you to a page that says "page not found." 

I can't find any documents proving that this guy dealt with Salt Lake City or even existed at all. Furthermore, there is only one article mentioning any logistics of the actual construction, written by John S. McCormick and published on a Utah government website called "History to Go," on the Utah Division of State History page. Read it here.  

Mr. McCormick doesn't cite a single source for his May 5, 2016 article, yet actually gives us some specific details about the construction crew. Some of these details I verified in newspaper articles. 

By the spring of 1892, he claims there were 100 men working on the building. He omits any information about the excavation of the foundation, which would've been an arduous undertaking with shovels and wagons, while battling either frozen or muddy ground by the seasons changing from winter to spring. 

According to one article, unskilled laborers received $2.25 a day and skilled laborers $4.50 day. McCormick does not specify who was skilled and what they were trained in. Of all the articles I searched in the newspaper archive, I only found one article that named any men employed on the project, and there were only two: Moroni J. Thomas and Walter Worthen.

The article reported that Moroni J. Thomas (who had only worked on the building for two months) was complaining that sandstone blocks were not being set properly and could be moved by hand. Walter Worthen also worked as a stone mason, and complained that the stone walls were insecure even up on the clock tower ("Mr. Bowman's Admission," The Daily Tribune: Salt Lake City, Utah, April 28, 1893).

Articles like these lend even less credence to the official narrative, begging questions such as: how were they still able to complete the structure in 2.5 years while navigating such unanticipated problems?

Besides the snippet about these two men, there are no journal entries, no family histories, no descendants proudly boasting of their fathers or grandfathers building this amazing edifice. Nothing but 100 faceless abstractions who threw this thing together in two and a half years, working from 7:30 Am to 5:00 PM, five days a week, in spring mud and winter snow.

McCormick tells us that the sandstone was quarried at the Castle Gate-Kyune Junction area of Carbon Country. This area was opened for mining coal in 1886, and is located ninety miles southeast of Salt Lake City. It was opened after the Denver and Rio Grand Western Railroad finished building a track from Castle Gate to Springeville, which is in the Orem-Provo area. 

While it is plausible that sandstone could've been quarried there and hauled by train to Salt Lake City, McCormick mentions nothing about the transport of materials, what company quarried it, how it was loaded onto the train, who formed it into blocks, or how it was hauled from the train station in Springville/Provo to the actual job site in Salt Lake City. 

When I asked Chat GPT where the sandstone was quarried, it told me that it came from Red Butte County. When I replied that I thought it had come from Kyune, it said that it was wrong and that I was right. Then I pointed out that Kyune was a coal mine and not a sandstone quarry, and it apologized and told me I was right again. I soon discovered that Chat GPT doesn't know anything about this building. 

But what I found really interesting is that when I asked the AI who was in charge of stone cutting for the building, it replied with Albert Pike.

Albert Pike was a southern general and one of the most famous Scottish Rite Freemasons of all time. He wrote the masonic handbook, Morals and Dogma.

When I replied that Albert Pike didn't live in Utah and that he was a southern general, the AI apologized again and said that it was wrong and that I was correct, admitting that it didn't know who was in charge of the stone cutting for the building. 

What is going on here? Why are Freemasons so intertwined in all the lore of these buildings? (More on that later.)   

But how many tons of sandstone did it really take to build this building? And how many tons per day could a quarrying company quarry? And how many tons per day or week could a train bring to the jobsite? And how much raw sandstone could a block maker chisel out in a day? And how were those blocks moved to the jobsite? And once there how were they cut to precision and then hoisted up to those astounding heights?

In one article I found about the corner stone ceremony, published by the Salt Lake Herald in 1892, it was estimated that it would require about 400 (train) carloads of sandstone to construct the entire building. It also stated that it would come from Kyune. But when you look up the history of Kyune Junction, located just outside of Castle-Gate, Utah, there is zero history of it being a sandstone quarry. It was actually a short-lived coal mine and after a series of unfortunate events closed down in the early 1900s. Today it is a ghost town. 

(Update: I discovered that Kyune was an actual sandstone quarry during the late 19th century. According to a book entitled, Utah's 19th Century Stone Quarries, the company who supplied the stone to the City-County Building was The Diamond, Kyune, and Castle Stone Company. The source the author uses to substantiate his claim is a newspaper article published by The Salt Lake Tribune, Jan. 1, 1899).

But let's just say that the 400 carload estimate was correct. When I asked Chat GPT how many tons of sandstone could be loaded onto one car the estimate was between 100 and 200 tons. According to Union Pacific Railroad, the weight capacity of a single car (in modern day, with modern engines and modern tracks) maxes out at about 315,000 pounds or 157 tons.

If we figure that 19th century train cars could handle about 300,000 pounds, then 150 tons of sandstone could be loaded onto each car. The density of sandstone is 145 pounds per cubit foot, which means that each block would weigh between one and two tons. Here is a picture of a 2 ton block for a visual:

At 400 carloads of 150 tons each, 60,000 tons of sandstone would be required for this job. Kyune was about 100 miles away from the jobsite, the average train speed was about 25-30 miles per hour, so each trip would take a full day there and back.

This begs another question: how many tons of sandstone could be quarried out each day and how many carloads could be loaded? In the 1890s, quarries were worked with dynamite, pick axes, and hand shovels. It was slow and arduous work.

Was there a weekly shipment from the quarry to the jobsite? And if so how many carloads were delivered each week? Did shipping and quarrying slow down in the winter months? Was demand kept up with? We have so many unknowns here, as we're not given the names of the quarrying, stone cutting, or shipping companies, or any descriptions of the logistics. 

Granted, sandstone is softer than granite, but it seems highly implausible that a building about as large as the Salt Lake Temple would only take three years to build vs forty years for constructing the latter. 

Again, things aren't adding up. We are told that from start to finish that the actual construction phase of this building only took 2.5 years, half of that time in snow and winter, on dirt roads. 

I asked Chat GPT the realistic time a structure like this would have taken in the 1890s and the answer was 5-7 years.  

Here is an arial picture of this massive building so you can see the scale these guys were working with:

There are 100 rooms in this building, each one adorned with intricate wood trim and detailing. Why would local politicians need such a massive structure to meet in? Especially when most residents in Salt Lake City were living in houses like this at the time:

Let's just ask a logical question: would these humble tax payers really support an increase in taxes to pay for the castle above just so their government overlords could have meetings in it? 

I, for one, would've voted a big fat hell no.

Yet, we are not told about any bond that was voted on and passed to build this structure. It is just assumed that these hapless tax payers were delighted to have this massive structure in their midst, while they went home at night to their sheds.

I'm not buying it, guys. 

Let's take a look at an original "construction" photo of this building. This is the only one I can find:

First of all, the natural sky, and Wasatch mountains have been masked out of the photo. 

Next, take a look at the cranes. They literally look like stick figures a five-year-old drew on a piece of paper, or added to the masked-out area where mountains would appear in the background. If you look in the middle you can see a very small platform with a man in it, as well as a few workers standing around at the bottom.

The cranes depicted are wooden cranes with pulleys, an outdated technology for the late 1800s. They don't look like they could hoist up even a decent sized piece of lumber, let alone a 2-ton block of stone, or a 2,500 pound clock at the top of the tower. 

Keep in mind this was the early 1890s, the steam-powered crane had been around for a long time and was very capable of lifting around 2-3 tons of material. Below is a picture of one. You'll notice it looks much stronger than the stick cranes pictured above:

These steam cranes were operated from the ground, not from on top of a building. This bad boy could probably hoist a 3 ton block of stone, but how high? 

This one doesn't look like it could go much higher than 50 feet or so. When I asked Chat GPT how high a steam-powered crane could lift a 3 ton block, it said that cranes during this period were limited and that a height of 200 or more feet may not have been feasible. Yet our building is 256 feet high.

When I asked Chat GPT about the lifting capacity of wooden cranes the answer was even more bleak. They were powered by ropes pulled by nothing but good o'l elbow grease. But the higher the lift, the more rope is required, leading to increased friction and needing even more manpower. How many men on one rope or cable would it take to lift a 2-ton block? If each man weighed an average total of 200 pounds, it would take at least 10 men if they were capable of lifting their own weight, all day, every day, for over two years. Is this even humanly possible? 

Could wooden cranes even handle the weight of a few tons of stone?  

The pulleys would of course make it easier to lift one's own body weight, but how tired would these men get by the time they lifted one block up to heights of 100 feet or more? How long could they hold the block up while other men on top were setting it in place? Would the wooden  cranes begin to crack and splinter as they were hoisting these massive blocks? What kind of structural scaffolding would it take to support the men on the top to be able to move each stone into perfect alignment?

This seems like very dangerous work to me. Who would sign up for a such a job at the height of the industrial revolution when much easier jobs were available?

OK let's return to the photo for a just a moment. Notice the anomalies in the sky. This is a phenomenon known as vanilla skies, a common occurrence in photos of the 1800s. Notice in the photo of the steam crane that the sky looks natural, yet in the other picture it looks blotchy. 

Believe it or not, they actually had the ability to photoshop images in the 1800s, all they had to do was combine the images of two negatives in the dark room. It was actually a common practice. There was an entire industry known as spirit photography where images were combined so that ghostly images would appear in the background.

People paid big money for these photographs. Some knew it was fake and others believed it was real. If they had technology to do this with people, manipulating photos of a building construction would be a drop in the bucket. 

But don't take my word for it. The video below was produced by someone who has a degree in photography, and he goes into great detail about how they photoshopped images all throughout the 1800s:

On top of all of this, don't you think that if a city government was building such a magnificent edifice they would want to document each phase of the construction process with photos? Remember, the camera was invented in 1816, 75 years before ground was broken on the Salt Lake City-County Building. 

And speaking of ghosts, let's talk about the two guys who carved all the artwork on the exterior of the building.

Other than on a Wikipedia page they don't exist at all. 

Oswald, the Nephites, and the Masons

In the narrative of the City-County Building, they want us to believe that two men carved all the intricate detail on the entire exterior of the building. They don't tell us how long this took, so I took the liberty of asking Chat GPT how long it would take 2 sculptors to hand carve all the artwork on the building, and the answer was several years.

Remember, this is before power tools (the first steam power tools came out in 1895), and carving artwork in stone with modern power tools is still time consuming. Here's a video showing the tediousness of carving stone with hand tools:

The name of the two men were Oswald Lendi and Walter Baird. Their names do not appear in any newspaper articles associated with the City and County Building, or literally anywhere else, except Wikipedia and Mr. McCormick's article. 

Oswald was supposedly from France, and after finishing the exquisite detail on the building was said to have carved his own face in between the sign at the top of the clock tower that read "City and County Building." 

I do not believe that these men ever existed, and even if they did, it seems highly implausible that they could have accomplished such a feat in the short time allotted by the narrative. 

Logistically they would have had to follow the stone masons, waiting around for the walls to get high enough to begin carving in designated areas. And furthermore, why are there no photographs of these two men on scaffolding with their chisels and punches happily carving away?

This seems very odd to me.   

Oswald is an interesting name. It comes from the old English word osweald, meaning "god-power, god-ruler" or "spirit." 

In my opinion, Oswald Lendi was nothing but an apparition, just as the name implies. Just as Lee Harvey Oswald was nothing but a patsy, and not the real assassin of JFK. 

So you're probably wondering, readers: if I don't believe the Utah pioneers built these structures, then who do I believe did? 

I don't know. I mean, do any of us really know anything?  

There are plenty of theories out there (Tartaria being the most popular one), but I don't think it's possible to know until God reveals our true history. And that won't come until we are obedient to what He has already given.

What is important is that we follow Moroni's counsel to awake to our awful situation, a situation that may be much worse than I previously thought. 

It's not my intent in this blog series to provide answers. I don't have them. Right now it is questions we need - critical scrutiny of the official narrative.

As far as I'm concerned, the only real history we have is what God has revealed, which means the most accurate history is contained in the Book of Mormon. Yet, we know that Nephite history as contained in that record is more spiritual than secular. 

God has revealed a pattern in that book, the pattern of cycles and methods of destruction. Cycles of destruction come about every 400 years, as Adrian Larsen has pointed out on his blog. On this land of America, God has swept off past inhabitants for two major sins: letting secret combinations take over the government and engaging in secret murder. And thanks to Amberli Peterson's book, we now know that secret murder is abortion.

Both the Nephites and the Jaredites were swept off for these very sins... but God never said that He didn't lead other groups here to the promised land after the Nephites were destroyed. Just because we are not told something doesn't mean that it didn't happen. (Perhaps the real history of this land is what we will learn when/if the sealed portion of the plates is finally revealed.)

And of course there is always the possibility that these structures belonged to the Nephites and were built so well that they are still standing today. Regardless of who built them, the patterns of destruction in the Book of Mormon remain the same. 

God revealed to us in the record of 3rd Nephi how He goes about destroying wicked cities. He uses natural cataclysmic events such as fire, tempests, earthquakes, thunder, lightning, and whirlwinds. Cities were incinerated (literally melted), buried by bodies of water or mountains, or carried away in whirlwinds. As a result of the destruction to the Nephites, "the face of the whole land became deformed."

Such an event would leave archeological and geological evidence in its wake... and part of what our Luciferian controllers have endeavored to cover up is that very evidence... existing right here in America. I'll get into that in later posts. 

Mormon tells us in the same paragraph I quoted above that "there were some cities that remained, but the damage thereof was exceedingly great, and there were many in them who were slain."

Here Mormon is describing the phenomenon of desolate cities. Some of these cities were built back up by the Nephites after Christ visited them:

And the Lord did prosper them exceedingly in the land, yea, insomuch that they did build cities again where there had been cities burned, yea, even that great city of Zarahemla did they cause to be built again. But there were many cities which had been sunk, and waters came up in the stead thereof; therefore, these cities could not be renewed. (4 Nephi 1:2, RE)

Here is another reference in the Book of Mormon where abandoned cities were rebuilt by the Nephites. This time under Gidgiddoni and Lachoneus: 

And it came to pass that there were many cities built anew, and there were many old cities repaired, and there were many highways cast up and many roads made which led from city to city, and from land to land, and from place to place. (3 Nephi 3:2, RE)

Inhabiting and rebuilding abandoned cities is human nature. Even Isaiah saw a future time when our gentile cities will become desolate and re-inhabited. There is clearly a pattern here. It's almost as if God leaves remnants of past civilizations to encourage us to inquire of Him about who they were. Such curiosity is healthy.

As you may recall, the people of Zeniff were especially curious about the Jaredite ruins they discovered while searching for the city of Zarahemla:

... having discovered a land which was covered with bones of men and of beast, etc., and was also covered with ruins of buildings of every kind; having discovered a land which was peopled with a people who were as numerous as the hosts of Israel. (Mosiah 5:12, RE, emphasis added)

Just as the Nephites were curious about the Jaredites, we should be curious about the Nephites, or any other group that God has led here to this land. We have much in common with them... we're all under the same stipulation that we must serve and worship Jesus Christ or be swept off when ripened in iniquity.

Before I end, there is one more thing to point out here. There is a common theme running through the narratives of many of these old buildings - the fact that many of them were "built" or founded by the Freemasons.

Many buildings and cities throughout America are said to have been "founded," a legal term meaning the following:

Based upon; arising from, growing out of, or resting upon.

Nowhere in this legal definition of founded do we find anything suggesting a new building was built. This is by design. However, if a building already existed and was "found," then any additional construction or renovation would be based on something arising from, growing out of, or resting upon, something else that was already there.

An example of a building in Utah that was founded was the original building for Zions bank. Here is the placard that says Brigham Young founded this building in 1873:

The term Master Mason is synonymous with Master Builder, and you may recall that Hiram Abiff, the central figure in Masonic lore, is the greatest Master Builder of all time. He supposedly built Solomon's temple with help from the king of Tyre, king of the Phoenicians.

Now this term Mason Mason has a multi-layered meaning: it suggests to the profane, or common man, that it has something to do with brick laying and masonry work, but to the initiated it means that they have been illuminated in the knowledge necessary to build and manipulate human societies.

This is the esoteric, or hidden meaning. Believe it or not, this was revealed to us in the Lego Movie, a story about young initiates who were learning to become Master Builders through the instruction of a sage named Vitruvius, played by Morgan Freeman. By the way, Vitruvius was a real person, a Roman architect and engineer, and most likely a Mystery School initiate.

In the movie, Vitruvius, a trained architect, is teaching others the craft of master building. They accomplish this with their minds, and when they become proficient at it they can build amazing structures out of random pieces they find around them, without plans. Meanwhile, the controllers of their society, men such as Lord Business, played by Will Ferrell, have created several realms of reality for them with outer limits, kind of like what we find in the Truman Show.

They give them just enough reality to keep them occupied, concealing just enough truth to keep them guessing. Every move calculated to maintain the status quo of dominion through ignorance. Tricking the common people into thinking that the Master Builders are endowed with some divine gift that allows them to build intricate creations virtually out of nothing. All without instructions or manuals. 

Can you see the parallels? In the narratives of these buildings the initial building plans are somehow always lost to history. The Freemasons always seem to get the buildings first by "building" or "founding" them, the Jesuits always seem to inherit the Cathedrals, governing bodies always get the capital buildings, and other religions seem to get the leftovers.

In reality, Masonic Master Builders build nothing but dependent and ignorant societies, which, in my opinion, was the plan all along.

And speaking of the Masons, here is their mark they put on the Salt Lake City and County Building, an out of place square that could be covering up who the true builders of this building were:

The supposed corner stone ceremony, held on July 25th of 1892 was attended by many masons of the area. The Salt Lake Herald reported the event, listing the names of the Masonic attendees. 

Now, just as George Orwell stated in 1984, newspaper articles can be changed or manipulated. We should not take this newspaper article as proof that this cornerstone ceremony was actually the celebration of a new building. 

This quote from Orwell is worth repeating here:

Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture repainted, every statue, street, and, building renamed, every date altered. And the process continues day by day... Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right. (George Orwell, 1984, emphasis added)

Every record destroyed or falsified, every picture repainted or photoshopped, and every building renamed and repurposed. 

Is it so hard to believe that a newspaper article could be rewritten, subtly changed, or completely fabricated? Those who control society can backdate and rewrite history in any way they please, especially now with the assistance of AI.

For those of you who believe in the Book of Mormon message given to us by Moroni that a secret combination, global in nature, exists in our day and is endeavoring to destroy the freedom of all lands, nations, and countries - ask yourself if that is possible for them to accomplish without rewriting history? I do not believe it is, because, if they are to be successful, we will have to go along with and believe their stories. 

Another article from the Salt Lake Herald dated December 29, 1894 reported on the formal opening of the building. Some prominent men spoke at the event. Wilford Woodruff gave the opening prayer. (I thought the Masons and Mormons were in a squabble over this building, but they chose him to open the ceremony with prayer?)

The talk I found most interesting was given by Judge E. F. Colborn. Here is a snippet where he mentions the Venetians:

For 600 years it was a beautiful custom of the Venetians in recognition of the commerce that came to them in ships, annually, as Ascension day, with solemn ceremonies to cast a ring into the Adriatic and thus wed their city to the sea. ("The Salt Lake Herald," Formally Opened: Interesting Exercises at the Joint City and County Building Yesterday, Saturday, Dec. 29, 1894)

The Venetians were a maritime society much like the ancient Phoenicians (you'll notice the two words sound similar), ruled by the king of Tyre, who provided Hiram Abiff (according to Masonic lore) and king Solomon all the materials needed to build the temple. Earlier in Judge Colborn's speech he specifically referred to the Joint County Building as a "temple."

The Phoenicians worshipped a goddess named Astarte, who was Ishtar, or Inanna to Sumerians, Aphrodite to the Greeks, Venus to the Romans, and Columbia to modern Americans. A statue of the pagan goddess Columbia was placed atop the clock tower of the building. Here is a close-up of it:

Columbia can be found on the Starbucks logo as well as the logo for Columbia Pictures, she is also represented in the Statue of Liberty. According to narrative, this statue was placed on the building to rival the angel Moroni on the Salt Lake Temple. But hold on a minute, there is an image of this goddess in the Mormon temple as well, in the form of Aphrodite. For those of you who have been in the Salt Lake Temple before it was destroyed..., I mean renovated in 2020, you'll recognize this motif:

 
Interesting indeed. Perhaps these buildings have more in common than we know. 

The interesting thing about Judge Colborn bringing up the Venetians is that the artwork on the exterior of the City-County Building is Venetian artwork, and in his speech, Colborn is formally "wedding" the Salt Lake City and County building to the sea, and Wilford Woodruff has formally opened that speech with prayer. (All talk of buildings aside, this is creepy stuff).  

Here is a common motif that we see in Venetian artwork:

Sea shells (notice that Aphrodite is sitting in a massive sea shell), winged-lions (griffins), cornucopias, fruit motifs, and masks were also common in Venetian art, carvings, and sculptures. 

On the exterior of the City-County Building, there are faces encased within intricate designs literally everywhere. Here is an example:

In my "Upon This Land" series I brought up the Black Venetian Nobility that once dominated and ruled Europe during the ages of feudalism. Some believe they were employed by the Jesuits and the Pope. Some of our past presidents like FDR, were descendants of these powerful families. 

As we get into some of the other buildings in Salt Lake City that I believe may have existed before 1847, this Venetian artwork will become more apparent. 

In the meantime, here are some pictures I took of the exterior of the Salt Lake City and County building:

Do you really think a bunch of Utah cowboy-pioneers were capable of such intricate block work in 1893? Do you really think that two guys with hand chisels created all of these intricate carvings in just a year or two? Do you really think that pioneers in Utah were obsessed with gargoyles and dragons, and not spiritually outraged by such things?

This building has now gone through two renovations, one in the 1980s that cost $30 million, and another one in 2018 for around $10 million. 

The contractor in 2018 was Big-D. They replaced some of the interior plumbing, heating, and mechanical, did some seismic upgrades for future earthquakes, and added about 15 tons of stone to the exterior. Another company called Abstract Masonry Restoration restored some of the engravings on the exterior. 

The project took two years, requiring 200,000 of labor hours and over 100 men to complete. Two years for renovations in 2018, but only three years to completely build in the 1890s?

This article reports that Big-D was planning on the project taking three years, but lucked out with two mild winters in a row. 

I wonder if the Utah pioneers were as lucky? Perhaps in the 1890s, these master builders experienced no winter season at all.

It is very possible that John H. Bowman was hired by Salt Lake City to perform a renovation on a building that already existed. This makes much more sense than what the official narrative is telling us. Every newspaper article I find on him reports some kind of fraud, drama, or litigation he was involved in. How on earth did he have time to build this massive and intricate building while dealing with and/or creating all these problems?

The most laughable part of all of this, is that The Salt Lake Herald reported on July 26 of 1893 that "Mr. Bowman has lost his job." The headliner read "The Joint Building: The Committee Decides to Terminate the Contract." 

This was over a year before the building was completed. Do you really think that a City Council, a bureaucracy shackled by myriad opinions and red tape, and consisting of people who know nothing about construction, could actually fill the role of general contractor with multiple subcontractors and efficiently complete construction on this exquisite monstrosity in record time?

And remember, according to the article that named the only two stone masons we know of, the building was falling apart by April of 1893.

And all this during the Panic of 1893?  

Are you beginning to question the official narrative yet? 

Stay tuned for Part IV, where we'll get into the history behind the Utah State Capital Building, truly a wonder of its time.

Postscript: Recommended Videos and Channels:

This Youtuber takes you on a virtual tour of the City-County Building, both interior and exterior. I will say that the sound quality is not the best but this is a great way to see the building:

This channel is amazing. A very good introductory channel to old world buildings and modern cover ups. It is called My Lunch Break. Start with this one (video quality gets better as you move up in episodes, he's up to almost 60 now):

This is another great channel, its called Jon Levi Productions. This video showcases city halls all over the world. Jon is from Utah and has a lot of videos on buildings in Salt Lake City: