This is the Place Monument at Heritage Park

Our first Utah Summer List accomplishment: we drove up to the "This is the Place" monument about a week ago. Both of us thought it was just a drive right up to the monument and take a picture type of thing. Nope! Heritage Park has re-created some of the historic Utah sites when the Mormon Pioneers came into the Salt Lake Valley. We bought tickets to take a little train ride throughout the park, visiting all the sites and doing some of the fun activities and demonstrations.

This is one of Brigham Young's three homes... it originally was in Sugarhouse, UT, but the park cut it in half between the two floors, trucked it up to the monument site, and put it back together again.

This is a printing press similar to the one used by the Deseret News... Utah's first newspaper

Chasen panning for gold. Just cause.

The Huntsman Hotel. Pretty sure the early pioneers didn't buy a cool, refreshing Diet Coke from in here like I did. Modern luxuries, I guess?

And what we really drove all the way up here for: This is the Place Monument.

A tribute to the Mormon pioneers who had fled persecution and crossed the plains and Rocky Mountains to start a new life in Salt Lake Valley.

Brigham Young had been sick with mountain fever, but knew immediately upon seeing the valley that this is where their journey would end, saying: "This is the Place!"