Pioneer Women

The Pioneer Women monument in Price tells two interconnected stories: the lives and labor of the women who helped settle the Price River Valley, and the determined effort of later generations to keep their memory alive. The women who came into the region represented varied backgrounds. Some had migrated west from elsewhere in the United States, while others had crossed oceans before making the long journey into Utah. Their experiences were not limited to traveling across the plains. Establishing a permanent home in the arid West demanded years of physical labor after the journey ended. Women helped prepare soil, plant and harvest crops, preserve food, care for children, maintain households, and support families through the uncertainties of frontier agriculture. Drought, insects, fire, illness, childbirth, isolation, and the loss of family members could all become part of pioneer life. In the Price River Valley, this pioneer story eventually became even more diverse. Carbon County developed into a mining and railroad center that attracted people from many nations and religious traditions. The monument's later interpretation deliberately recognizes this broader heritage, honoring women whose different cultures contributed to the community that Price became. By the 1920s, members of the Daughters of Utah Pioneers in Price wanted a permanent place where this history could be remembered. In June 1928, Price Mayor W. F. Olson deeded land to the Daughters of Utah Pioneers for what became known as Pioneer Evergreen Park. DUP members did not create the park alone. Their families and local Boy Scouts helped clear and prepare the grounds for a monument honoring pioneer women. Local artist Dean Fausett was selected to create its central figure. Fausett designed a pioneer woman shown walking forward in a long dress. Her bonnet hung behind her, and she carried a sack of grain over her left arm. The figure was modeled after a real Carbon County woman, Florence Virginia Horsley Jorgensen. The statue stood atop a rock cairn constructed by Dan Morley. Together, the stone monument and figure created a memorial to the generations of women whose work had helped establish homes and communities in the region. The original monument was formally dedicated on September 7, 1931. Bishop George Jorgensen offered the dedicatory prayer. For a time, the Pioneer Women monument stood as its creators intended. But as the decades passed, important pieces disappeared. The original cement statue vanished, as did the monument's bronze markers. Eventually, even the details of exactly who the statue represented and how the memorial had originated became difficult to reconstruct. That might have been the end of the monument's story. Instead, a historical investigation began in 2009. Researchers turned to surviving records, including minutes kept by the Daughters of Utah Pioneers. Those records revealed an especially valuable detail: Dean Fausett's original pioneer woman had been modeled after Florence Virginia Horsley Jorgensen. Old newspaper accounts and historical photographs provided additional evidence of the monument's original appearance. Those materials were given to local sculptor Gary Prazen, who used the historical evidence to recreate the missing pioneer woman. This time, the figure was cast in bronze, providing a more durable replacement for the original cement statue. The original rock monument was also preserved. Richard Morley repaired the historic cairn constructed decades earlier by Dan Morley. The restoration came at an especially appropriate moment. Price celebrated its centennial in 2011, and the restored Pioneer Women monument was rededicated as part of that centennial year. The restored memorial did more than recreate something that had been lost. Its interpretation broadened the meaning of "pioneer women" to honor the many women who contributed to Price's multinational community while preserving their own traditions, beliefs, families, and memories. The monument therefore connects several generations of women. It honors those who endured the difficulties of migration and settlement, the DUP women who created Pioneer Evergreen Park and the original memorial in the 1920s and 1930s, and the community members who recovered and restored the monument nearly eighty years later. Today the bronze woman again walks atop the original rock cairn, carrying her symbolic sack of grain. Her image is a reminder that the settlement of Utah was not accomplished only by the men whose names often dominate traditional histories. Women planted and harvested, prepared food, raised families, cared for the sick, preserved cultural traditions, established organizations, and helped turn isolated settlements into lasting communities.

Settlement in the Price River Valley developed differently from many of Utah's earliest agricultural communities. Although settlers established farms and ranches in the region, the discovery and development of Carbon County's enormous coal resources transformed the area during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Railroads and coal mines created communities whose populations included immigrants from numerous countries. People came to Carbon County from places including southern and eastern Europe and other parts of the world in search of work. Price grew into the commercial center serving this increasingly diverse region. Women played essential roles throughout these changes. Pioneer and immigrant women maintained households under difficult circumstances, raised children, produced and preserved food, cared for neighbors, participated in religious and civic organizations, and helped maintain cultural traditions. By the early twentieth century, descendants of Utah's pioneers were increasingly concerned that firsthand memories of the settlement period were disappearing. The Daughters of Utah Pioneers had been organized in 1901 specifically to collect histories, preserve artifacts, identify historic places, and perpetuate the memory of Utah's pioneers. Carbon County women organized their own local DUP efforts during the 1920s. Susan Lucretia Peacock Richards was among the women involved in establishing the local organization and promoting Pioneer Evergreen Park. The park project reflected an important change in historical preservation. Rather than allowing the pioneer generation to disappear without a physical memorial, local women actively created a public landscape where pioneer history could be preserved. Mayor W. F. Olson's 1928 transfer of land gave the organization a permanent location for that work. The Pioneer Women monument became the centerpiece of that effort in 1931. Its restoration eighty years later demonstrates that historical monuments themselves have histories. They can deteriorate, disappear, be reinterpreted, and eventually become subjects of historical research. The monument visitors see today is therefore both old and new: the historic rock cairn survives from the original memorial, while the bronze pioneer woman represents a twenty-first-century reconstruction based on evidence of Dean Fausett's lost 1931 statue.