6 U. coeds officially opened Zion Park

Six young University of Utah sorority sisters made national and international headlines based on their adventures in Zion National Park in 1920 as the first "official" visitors as part of a promotional tour.

They posed perched on logs, huddled around the campfire and engaged in antics and pranks as they explored places long since off-limits to modern park visitors.

One woman, daring Dora Montague, dangled on a swing over the ground hundreds of feet below while she sketched a picture.

There was "nothing under me but a big cavity in the mountain's wisdom tooth," she recounted in her journal. A year later, the photo appeared in a London newspaper.

But it wasn't long after that that their story dropped into obscurity, forgotten in the history books, neglected by storytellers.

Then, last year, a chance discovery of one of the women's scrapbooks offered on e-Bay launched the pictorial project, "Opening Zion: Scrapbook of the National Park's First Official Tourists."

The journal, purchased by John and Melissa Clark, led to other journals and interviews with descendants of some of the women, all of whom have since died.

John Clark, a graphic designer at the Deseret News, said the students' ventures at Zion mark the beginning of "modern tourism" to Utah's oldest and most popular national park.

Of course, visitors caught its grandeur before 1920, but the railway-promoted tour was designed to capture international attention with the help of some pretty faces.

It worked.

In 1920, visitors to the park numbered 3,600 and within 10 years later had climbed to 55,000.

Railway access and road improvements helped to lay Utah's geologic treasure at the footsteps of ordinary travelers. But headlines in New York, Los Angeles and London papers about the six sexy girls didn't hurt.

"Opening Zion," by the Clarks, is slated to be published by University of Utah press.

E-MAIL: amyjoi@desnews.com