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Show 1855 Base and Meridian market on display By QUIG NIELSEN The Great Salt Lake Base and Meridian market, installed just outside the southeast comer of Temple Square in August 1855, is now in the new historical display in the Museum of Church History and Art in Salt Lake City, just west of Temple Square. The meridian fixed the point established on Aug. 2, 1847, by Orson Pratt and Henry G. Sherwood when the first survey was begun. David H. Burr, the first U.S. Surveyor General for Utah, installed the marker as a beginning beginn-ing point for public land surveys. To preserve the historic marker and with the encouragement of Salt Lake City government leaders, permission was given in August 1989, to remove the stone and place it under cover to protect it from destructive weathering. Johann "Hans" Heuttlinger of Salt Lake City, using authentic nineteenth nineteen-th century techniques, expertly carved a replacement stone of the same material, ma-terial, and it is now in place at the original site. r - Another Utah sandstone marker in the museum display came from above the entrance of the Social Hall, an adobe building erected in 1852 on State Street. Social Hall was a recreational building where varied social events, musicals, and plays were produced and dancing took place. A replica has been constructed at Pioneer Trails State Park at the mouth of Emigration Canyon. A replica of the sandstone marker can be seen above the entrance of the reconstructed building. The Mormon museum is using both sandstone markers in its story of the buildings erected under the church's public works program of the 1850s. Museum conservators explain that softer sandstones and limestones used for many inscription stones, unlike granite, deteriorate relatively fast Protecting Pro-tecting them from the elements by moving the stones indoors, halts their destruction. Source: Records from the IDS Museum of Church History and Art (Quig Nielsen is an information officer for the Museum of Church History and Art in Salt Lake City.) |