Amid pomp, speeches, songs and fanfare, a 15-foot black granite obelisk commemorating Bountiful's centennial was dedicated Saturday by Mayor John Cushing - three years after the actual 1992 centennial.
"We started this committee in 1990, and it's taken us this long to get the monument," said Bountiful Centennial Committee member Dora Flack. "This really is the completion of all our centennial programs."Early Bountiful scenes and pioneer figures are engraved in the monument's sides, as well as the names of 100 people and businesses who contributed at least $500 toward the $5,500 structure.
"It is a beautiful and fitting monument, and a lot of people have worked a long time to get it here," Cushing said.
Utah Centennial Committee Chairman Kim Burningham also spoke at the dedication ceremony.
The monument is located in the midst of a $128,000 garden fountain built by the Bountiful Redevelopment Agency, in front of the city's new post office (which will have its own grand opening June 24). Flack said the location at the intersection of Center and Main streets is ideal.
"We have had this in mind for quite a while, after they demolished the Bountiful Drug there," Flack said. "We thought it would be a good spot."
Two Bountiful pioneers are given prominent place on the monument:
Peregrine Sessions was the first inhabitant of Sessions Settlement. The first settler to venture outside of Salt Lake Valley, he built a dugout and later a cabin at 200 North and 200 West after arriving on Sept. 27, 1847, just two months after the first pioneers entered Salt Lake Valley.
Sessions, who had come following Brigham Young's instructions to find more grass for pasture, encountered a large willow patch with a heavy growth of grass, and other settlers soon came to the small green area. The area grew, and in 1855 its denizens voted to rename it Bountiful.
The city was incorporated on Dec. 14, 1892.
Hannah Holbrook was the town's first schoolteacher. In 1849 she began teaching in a makeshift schoolhouse made of reeds and similar materials on the city's west side, until a permanent structure was built at 400 North and 200 West.
One of the city's elementary schools is now named in her honor.
The monument has been a long time in coming. The Centennial Committee initially anticipated financial help from the city, but when it wasn't forthcoming the members finally got a fund-raiser and gathered the money themselves. Notwithstanding the numerous centennial programs carried out in 1992, the committee members wanted a monument and decided they weren't going to stop until they got one.
"This was the second settlement in the entire Utah Territory, and never has there been one monument or one thing commemorating it," Flack said.
The celebration will be capped Monday when a brass plaque with a facsimile of Bountiful's incorporation document will be installed in City Hall. The Centennial Committee will then indulge in a good, long rest.
"If this thing doesn't end soon, I will," Flack said.