Mormons 'own' site's story

ALCOVA, Wyo. — Tens of thousands of people come here each year to a granite-walled nook in the hills just off the old pioneer trail to hear the tale of the lost Martin Handcart Company of 1856 and how a party of poor Mormon converts faced down death in a howling blizzard.

The place, called Martin's Cove — an uninhabited hollow of sand and sage surrounded by sheer cliffs that block the wind — sits on federal land 50 miles southwest of Casper, part of the vast Western domain of the Bureau of Land Management. But the story is not told by bureau employees. Missionaries from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, dispatched on six-month assignments and brimming with faith, are the trail and museum guides.

Now that unusual relationship — a publicly owned historic site interpreted by a private and very interested party — has been locked into law. A brief provision tucked into an energy bill signed by President Bush in December authorizes a 25-year lease agreement between the church and the government, with all but automatic renewals after that.

What that means is that the Mormon Church will, in a very real way, own the Martin's Cove story, probably in perpetuity. All visitors seeking access must cross private land purchased by the church in the 1990s, and the law allows church authorities to decide, in consultation with the bureau, who may be denied admission for, say, improper deportment. On each side of the fence marking the public-private line, missionaries lead the way, happy to answer questions of history or scripture.

The arrangement and the controversy that simmers around it in Wyoming lays bare an American frontier between religious and secular life that is as raw today, in everything from school prayer to town-hall Christmas creches, as it was when the Mormons first made their way to Utah in the 1840s.

Some local residents and advocates for strict separation of church and state say they fear that history is being privatized, that spiritual lessons will supersede facts or that a religious interpretation will distill the complexity of Western history into an overly simplified fable.

"It's historical revisionism — they're using a particular place to enshrine these deaths, but in the history of the Western movement, thousands of people died, so it's very difficult to claim this particular spot as sacred ground," said Barbara Dobos, a resident of Casper and public-lands advocate who has led the opposition to the church's efforts.