Tourists and the Making of an American Mainline

This chapter aims to trace railroad, tourist, and Mormon interactions beneath–and influencings of–the canopy of congressional law. It explores the recasting of federal anti-Mormon policies in light of railroading concerns and how Charles Francis Adams Jr.’s preface was a profound political act. Railroad literature played a role in mediating and marketing Utah religion and amplifying the genre of prerailroad tourism and guidebooks by focusing on the Mormons. The chapter also demonstrates how even while Congress attacked and, in time, forced concessions from the LDS Church with regard to polygamy and politics, Mormon material culture and geography were concurrently identified with Mormonism by railroads and capitalists if not also by congressmen.