Celebration In Utah

Salt Lake City, Ju4y 20.- The people of the youngest state in the Union, reenforeed by thousands of visitors from the east and south and the Pacific coast, began Tuesday a season of festivity in honor of the jubilee anniversary of the en trance of the Mormon pioneers to the Valley of the Grcat Salt Lake. It will be half a century Saturday since the little band of Anglo-Saxons who had broken the first trail from the Missouri river rounded up a trip that had been attended with innumerable hardships and suffering-, and pitched a permanent camp upon the prairie near the site now occupied by the great Mormon tabernacle and temple. From this small beginning, which made possible the settlement of the great American desert and opened the central west to civilization, has grown one of the greatest and best-known cities of the far west. Only a handful is left of the men and women, the boys and girls, of 1847. All of these have whitened locks and most of them are feeble from oíd age, but they have journeyed from distant parts of the country, and even from abroad, to particípate in the jubilee and to witness, some of them for the first time, the wonderful change that time has wrought in a country which when they first traversed it was a barren and parched plain, with wild beasts and Indians as its only inhabitants. Full Life of Stateliood. Recognition of the fact that Utah has emerged from its chrysalis condition as a territory into the full life of statehood is also interwoven with the celebration, which, in the closing words of the eloquent invitation of the jubilee commission, is intended "To commemorate the achievements of the pioneers of 1847; to enable the survivors of them to hold a reunión upon their last camping ground; to Ilústrate the progress of a commonwealth; to proclaim the prevalence of peace and good will ' in Utah, regardlese of religious belief, and to grandly celébrate the auspicious close of the first half-century of Utah's unique and interesting career." Booming of cannon ushered in the opening day of the celebration. The gayly decorated streets were crowded from an early hour and the throngs were added to by numerous trains from the east and the west, which came in at intervals during the morning. Outside of an abundance of the stars and stripes the decoratlons were mostly of sage green, yellow and red, forming a beautiful and striking combination- the sage green representative of the sage brush so plentiful in Utah; the yellow ' of the sunflower and the red of the foothills. Monument to Brigham Young. The chlef event of the day was the unveiling of the monument erected to Brigham Young. The exercises opened shortly after 10 o'clock, an' immense crowd being gathered about the shaft. The ceremonies, consisting of religious rites, music and an oration, were of an impressive character and were participated in by a number of church dignitaries and clvic officials. ■ Tuesday afternoon there was a reception to the surviving pioneers and their children in the tabernacle. At night there was a grand concert, with a chorus of 1,000 voices, in the same structure, and the performance of a pioneer drama at the Salt Lake theater. Of the 2,000 pioneers who entered Salt Lake valley in 1847 there are only 650 survivors. These have each been presented with a gold badge valued at $10, the work of Tiffany & Co. of New York. The badge presents typical figures in the early history of Utah, inclufling an accurate medaillon portrait of President Brigham Young.