Salt Lake City ~ Free Admission
The Pioneer
Memorial Museum is noted as the world's largest collection of artifacts on
one particular subject, and features displays and collections of
memorabilia from the time the earliest settlers entered the Valley of the
Great Salt Lake until the joining of the railroads at a location known as
Promontory Point, Utah, on May 10, 1869.
As you enter the Pioneer Memorial Museum, you literally walk back into history. Here are the belongings of a hardy pioneer people who migrated 2,000 miles west across the plains from Nauvoo, Illinois, and from all parts of the world to seek religious freedom and to build a great city of Zion in the Salt Lake Basin.
The artifacts of the pioneers may surprise
you. While the museum displays plenty of necessary objects fashioned
out of the scarce resources available in Utah, the
pioneers also leave a material record of
remarkably ornate decorative arts. They carefully tended their luxury
items -- as small and delicate as crystal salters or as large and
cumbersome as pianos -- all the way across the continent. The museum
displays many of these treasures that reminded them of "home" or their
loved ones they were leaving behind. Also, pioneer craftsman were
astoundingly adaptable to the materials available in Utah, making gorgeous
pine furniture and painting it in a fashion that makes it look like more
expensive wood, such as mahogany. Early Utahns also owned some of the
finest goods available at the time, brought in either with ox team or by
railroad later. From rugged, homemade utilitarian objects to elaborate
Victorian decor, you can see the full range of the material record of the
resilient pioneers at the Pioneer Memorial Museum.
The Daughters of Utah Pioneers, founded in 1901, is actively working to preserve the history and artifacts of its Pioneer ancestors. The Pioneer Memorial Museum is located at 300 North Main Street, in Salt Lake City, Utah. This museum has the finest collection of pioneer memorabilia in the Intermountain West. Paintings by noted Utah artists, guns, quilts, flags, furniture, books, hand-made clothing, and too many items to enumerate are found here.
The museum is open to the public without charge.
The Daughters of Utah Pioneers maintain numerous satellite museums around the state of Utah and beyond.
Click here for a list of other DUP (satellite) Museums.
|
A
Glipmse of the Pioneer Memorial Museum
(also known as the Daughters of Utah Pioneers Museum) Click on the Titles listed above to read about each one. Click here to read some trivia about how the pioneers made paper and other facts about paper! |
