Affalone Christensen with her grandson Rodney and son David at her 100th birthday celebration on July 24. Special birthday Grand marshal turns 100 on day of parade By Karen Prisbrey Staff writer 7-30-08 After eight years of preparation and planning, the Mormon Pioneer National Heritage Area (MPNHA) is in the final stages of becoming official. The second-to-last step in the process began last week—a 30-day comment period on the heritage area’s management plan. The plan summarizes scores of programs and projects in each of the five heritage districts along the U.S. 89 corridor and sets a 10-year budget of about $34 million for those projects, including both congressional appropriations and locally generated matching funds. Copies of the plan have been released to public libraries throughout the MPNHA, which follows U.S. 89 (Utah’s Heritage Highway 89) from Sanpete County to the Utah-Arizona border, along with a couple diversions along state highways 12, 24 and 132. The plan will be available for review and comment until Aug. 25. Planners will incorporate those comments as appropriate before submitting a final version to the U.S. Department of the Interior sometime in September for final approval next year. The plan details how organizers intend to carry out the mission of the MPNHA, which is “to preserve, promote, develop and interpret Mormon pioneer heritage along the MPNHA corridor where travelers experience one of the most fascinating stories in the settlement of the West—the colonization story of the Mormon pioneers,” as stated in Mt. Pleasant Mayor Chesley Christensen’s letter recommending the plan to U.S. Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne. That story begins in 1849, when the first group of Mormon pioneers entered the Sanpete Valley, sent by Mormon leader Brigham Young. Over the next few years, a string of settlements spread southward along a path that is now U.S. 89. The MPNHA seeks to tell the story of the indomitable pioneering spirit of the past that established the area so that “citizens of today and tomorrow will find inspiration as they meet the challengers of the future,” Christensen writes. History of MPNHA creation In 2000, a group of government officials, artisans, business people and other interested persons created the Utah Heritage Highway 89 Alliance, an organization interested in telling the story of the land, people, history and culture along U.S. 89. For the next four years, meetings were held throughout the proposed heritage area to develop the plan. In 2004, the Utah State Legislature officially designated the MPNHA and directed that a Mormon Pioneer Heritage Center be established at Snow College in connection with Utah State University. The center is to be the headquarters of the MPNHA and its managing/administration group, the Utah Heritage Highway 89 Alliance. In 2006, Congress passed the Mormon Pioneer Heritage Act sponsored by Sen. Robert Bennett. President Bush signed the act into law in October of that year, officially creating the heritage area, and mandating that a management plan be submitted to the Department of the Interior by Oct. 12, 2009. Area coverage The MPNHA covers the U.S. 89 corridor from Fairview at the north end of Sanpete County, south to Kanab and east to Page, Ariz. (at the south end of Lake Powell). But it is not limited to U.S. 89. It also includes S.R. 132 from Fountain Green to Pigeon Hollow Junction; S.R 12 from Panguitch to Torrey (which has also been designated as Utah’s first “All-American Road”); and S.R. 24 from Torrey to Salina (the Capitol Reef Scenic Byway). It covers about 400 miles of highway, all or part of six counties and 47 cities and towns. In those communities, the plan states, there are more than 4,000 buildings that are either listed on the National Register of Historic Places or “have the potential to be listed.” Organization The entire heritage area will be managed by the Utah Heritage Highway 89 Alliance, which will have a board of directors made up of two members from each of the six counties, with the Utah Historic Preservation Officer, an employee in the Utah Division of State History, as an at-large member. The heritage area is divided into five “heritage districts,” areas identified as having a common element, such as culture, history or geography. They are Little Denmark, Sevier Valley, Headwaters, Boulder Loop and Under the Rim. Sanpete County comprises Little Denmark. Within each of those districts are community chapters—local entities committed to preserving or promoting the heritage of their individual communities through specific projects. One of the main ways of the heritage area will be promoted will be by promoting the heritage of communities within it. To accomplish that, the plan calls for establishing a MPNHA Partnership Advisory Group made up of local, state and federal government officials, both elected and appointed; higher-education representatives; the directors of the Eccles and Utah Heritage foundations; travel and economic-development directors from the six counties; mayors and county commissioners; business, artisan and crafts representatives; and the executive director of church history for the LDS Church. The partnership, in conjunction with each of the heritage districts, would identify programs and projects that would carry out the mission of the MPNHA. A large part of the management plan is inventory of programs and projects that have already been identified. One such effort affecting Sanpete County is the Mormon Pioneer Heritage Center on the campus of Snow College, which will be the administration center and headquarters of the MPNHA. Another is the Central Utah Pioneer Heritage Center, to be located in Manti east of the Sanpete County Fairgrounds. It will serve as “the major interpretive site for the north end of the MPNHA.” A similar project is planned in Escalante addressing the south end of the heritage area. About $13 million of the $34 million budget would be spent on projects in Sanpete County. The bulk of that, $10 million, would go to the administrative center at Snow College and the heritage center in Manti. In all, the plan identifies about 25 projects in Sanpete County that it seeks to undertake or support (see graphic on front page).