| Walking a mile in Nauvoo shoes
The rebuilding of the Nauvoo temple will bring already thriving Mormon tourism to yet greater heights. Upwards of 750,000 people are expected for the opening ceremonies this summer. Visitors from all fifty states, every Canadian province, and thirty-six other countries are already on the guest list. Since the groundbreaking in 1999, the new temple has risen rapidly above the town, its gold dome and statue of the Angel Moroni overshadowing the mushroom-shaped water tower (the town's only other structure of any significant height). The exterior of the new is a ringer for the old, which was erected on a bluff above the old town. That neoclassical limestone structure towered 157 feet over the broad flood plains of the Mississippi River. When the Latter-day Saints fled west, the temple was gutted by arsonists. The temple crowns an elaborate historical recreation of the Nauvoo-that-was. Modern Nauvoo, with a population of only about 1,200, hardly compares. Most residents live on a downtown grid hardly large enough for a game of checkers. Mulholland Street, the town's main drag, is lined with a sprinkling of restaurants, hotels, bookstores, and gift shops that beckon tourists with the mom and pop flair of a roadside attraction. But in the 1840s, the town had ten times its current population, and most residents dwelled near the river in what is now known as the Flat. Temple aside, it is the Flat that's booming, the long-empty lots and sign-less streets reborn as a living museum. But the faithful and the curious didn't come in large numbers until 1996, when the church and the U.S. Park Service celebrated the opening of the Mormon Heritage Trail, a 1,624-mile marked route from the Mississippi River to Utah. Annual tourism shot up to 350,000, and remains high--250,000 visitors per year, according to the Nauvoo Chamber of Commerce. Guidebooks and package tours now take visitors from sacred sites in upstate New York, where Mormonism began, through Ohio, Missouri, Illinois, and, of course, Utah. Along the way, the Church maintains forty-four historic sites, nineteen with visitors' centers. Homer's program included nine days of touring. At each stop she picked a wildflower and pressed it next to the corresponding passage in her heavily underlined copy of the Book of Mormon. Richard Ostling, a non-Mormon journalist who has spent much of his career writing on the church, writes in Mormon America: The Power and the Promise that "history became religious ritual" after "the original generation of those who had known the prophet were gone." Nauvoo blends historic preservation and tourism, with the latter bleeding into the realm of pilgrimage. The return to Nauvoo has not simply been thousands flocking to see the places and artifacts of the early church (or their earnest reconstructions). It has been a chance for contemporary Mormons to feel what life was like for the church's founders, to experience their trials, hardships, and faith. Dozens of elderly missionaries, in full 1840s garb, work as guides in the reconstructed buildings. The Blacksmith Shop and Brickyard invite visitors to try their hand at pounding metal and molding clay. At the Scovil Bakery, visitors taste gingerbread men baked in the reconstructed ovens--and are sent home with the recipe. For a non-Mormon, these activities may seem like little more than historic amusements. But for members of the church, this reenactment of nineteenth century life has a profound religious component. For Homer, acting out the struggles of the church founders helps her reflect on her own life. "I have it a whole lot easier," she says. "Yeah, I've sewn in some class, but I didn't have to make soap or sleep on hay." Her experiences in Nauvoo, she says, have led her to ask herself some questions: "What am I willing to do? What am I willing to sacrifice? If I was asked to pick up and give up everything, would I be willing to sacrifice?" Walking a mile in Nauvoo shoes |