Conclusion

This chapter shows how LDS officials and businessmen continuously found ways to bend railroads to their benefits or reshape Mormons institutions in order to flourish in their networks, such as the irrigation display at the Chicago World’s Fair. Regardless of the failure of the Bear River Irrigation company, it was proof of Mormon fortitude through cultural and locative righteousness. The company’s resources were reorganized by Mormon businessmen, and Mormons effectively promoted the LDS Church in other venues at World’s Fair. On the other hand, railroad barons’ contracts provided uninterrupted freighting, lucrative receipts of transcontinental tourism, and friendships with Mormon businessmen who intervened on their behalf in Congress. The results of their efforts were the combined naturalizing and mainlining of Mormonism, as tourists were convinced that they could learn from the Mormons to cultivate western lands and define religion in the modern west.