"Provo or Hell!" was the rallying cry during the days of the city's founding in 1849, when the first Mormon colony outside of Salt Lake City was founded.
Over the years the city has progressed from the "Garden City" alias the city earned in the late 1800s for its extensive fruit trees, orchards and gardens to the modern sobriquet, "Happy Valley," which is probably the result of Provo being passed over for a transcontinental railroad stop in favor of Ogden in 1869.
Before that, Provo was Utah's second largest city, and harbored thousands of Mormons, including Brigham Young, when the population of Salt Lake City fled south as federal forces invaded the territory during the "Mormon Insurrection" in 1858.
With the homogenizing influence of the rails moved to the north, Provo was left in relative isolation for years, helping to preserve the city's distinctly Mormon flavor.
This year Provo is celebrating its 160th year, and photo researcher Ron Fox has culled the Deseret News photo archives looking for pictures of Provo, some of which have never appeared in print. The photos are available at www.deseretnews.com.
Many of the photos feature commercial buildings and homes dating to the late 1800s, including an 1898 rendition of Fort Utah, built by the Mormon settlers in response to attacks from hostile Ute Indians in 1850. Fort Utah was also the community's original name, until it was changed to Provo in honor of Etienne Provost, a French-Canadian trapper who arrived in the area in 1825.
Helen H. Anderson, Provo public information officer, said no community celebration is planned for the off-decade anniversary.
"We are not planning to have a party. We don't have the resources to have a party for everything we'd like to have a party for," Anderson said. "What we do have is Robert Carter's most recent volume of Provo history." Carter's book, "From Fort to Village," recounts the years 1850 to 1854.
An early newspaper account, printed in the March 10, 1859, Deseret News, did mark the 10th year of the community. Written by an unidentified "correspondent writing from Provo" and listed with a group of brief stories under the common headline, "Item," the story said the community was "looking up."
"It is two years last Autumn since I was here and I notice more improvement in the appearance of the place since that time than in the eight years previous. The city is being extended and the 'bench' east of the city is being built up, and I believe will yet become the business part of the town," the anonymous reporter wrote.
"Speaking of improvements, Provo now sports a barber shop, which cannot be said of any of the settlements I have visited south of here, and the gentlemanly young 'knight of the razor,' ready to tonsure his customers on the shortest notice, fills up his spare time in playing marbles."
The writer also commented on the community's already squeaky clean image:
"There is less whisky drinking carried on here at present that was wont to be in the past history of Provo. Most persons of bibulous tendencies have either reformed or moved away to some other place; or perhaps their abstinence may be from necessity, as I understand there is no whisky sold here at present except for medicinal purposes, and those selling would be apt to suspect something if a person should be taken 'sick' too often."
For its centennial, Provo held a more elaborate celebration, reminiscent of today's Stadium of Fire. An uncredited story in the June 12, 1949 Deseret News reported that the event would feature a parade, an oration by University of Utah Dean O. Meredith Wilson, and an outdoor show at the BYU stadium featuring "an array of Hollywood talent," which included "the Five Taylors, teen-age boys and girls in tumbling, bouncing and acrobatic acts; the Five Aerial Eltons, five girls who do trapeze, ring and sway pole acts 100-feet above the ground; and the Five Debutante Dancing Girls."
The entire event was capped with a fireworks display that was purported to be "the greatest display of fireworks yet shown in Provo," according to Clayton Jenkins, who was secretary-treasurer of the nonprofit July 4th Celebration Corporation.
E-MAIL: mhaddock@desnews.com