Fort Douglas celebrates sesquicentennial with a Civil War Ball, family day

Rocking chairs add an old-fashioned feel to the residential porches along Officers Circle.

Ray Boren

FORT DOUGLAS Shaded on a summer's day by leafy trees and embracing spacious green parade grounds and a traditional bandstand, the white-trimmed sandstone dwellings and brick buildings along, and near, Fort Douglas' Officers Circle seem a model of all-American peace and order.

As a result, it is sometimes difficult to remember that today's serene enclave high on Salt Lake City's east bench was established exactly 150 years ago in 1862 amid the strife of the Civil War. Early on, the fort was itself a crux of what historian Brigham D. Madsen called a "cold war" and a key engine of the region's economy.

This was back when the Mormon settlers of Utah Territory, which only a year earlier stretched from the Rocky Mountains to the high Sierra Nevada range, were seeking to become citizens of what they hoped would become the State of Deseret. Brigham Young, the president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, was their prophet and their political leader.

Col. Patrick Edward Connor, the founder of Camp Douglas soon to be Fort Douglas, named for the recent presidential candidate and late senator from Illinois, Stephen A. Douglas was the new representative of President Abraham Lincoln's U.S. government and military.

"Both individuals could be quite provocative, in words they used and in their actions," says Ephraim Dickson, curator of the Fort Douglas Military Museum.

That Utah cold war, "almost went to a 'hot war' in 1863 and 1864," Dickson says.

Perhaps oddly, President Young and Col. Connor conspicuously avoided one another. "They were the two most influential and politically powerful people in Utah though in real life they never met," Dickson says.

Dickson and Bob Voyles, the museum's director, are both deep into preparations for the post's upcoming, family-oriented Fort Douglas Day, to be held from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday, June 16, and the annual Civil War Ball on the preceding evening, Friday, June 15, from 7 to 9:30 p.m.

Go here to see the original:
Fort Douglas celebrates sesquicentennial with a Civil War Ball, family day