Show Last of the 1847 Pone Pioneers rs THE THE 1847 pioneers of Utah are gone From 1 now on they and the story of pf their perilous trek across the plains to the little known an and less favored barren waste which the Salt Lake valley then was are a part of the written record record record rec rec- rec- rec ord of Utah No one is left to tell of those times from personal experience The last survivor of the tile 1847 trek to Utah Mrs Mary A. A Park Brockbank of Holladay died Monday at the age of 98 Mrs Brockbank came across the plains to Utah in the summer of 1847 arriving here in September just two months after the trailblazing trailblazing trailblazing trail- trail blazing party of Brigham Young reached the valley Although she was only four at th the time Mrs Brockbank remembered some of her experiences on that difficult trip and vividly recalled the perils and trials of the pioneers in those early years of settlement as they built homes and productive farms in what had been practically a desert With her parents she lived two years in the Salt Lake area and then went with a few other pioneers to open open oper up a new settlement on the Provo river where all I lived ved in a mile- mile square fort for protection from marauding Indians The passing of Mrs Brockbank rockbank is an occa occa- sion for mourning for all not only because of the death of a woman who was a good mother and a good citizen but because it marks the closing of the pioneer book in the history of this region We Weare are already well embarked on a new book of progress as an established community now but the last living link with the early pioneers is gone the book is closed and we have only the new book of development and progress of a settled com comA com in which to record the deeds and achievements the births and lives and deaths of May the pages of that new book be as full of tales of courage and enterprise of accounts of achievement and progress as was the book of the pioneers I With the passing of the last survivor of the days of 1847 we of Utah can can and should pay sober tribute to the era which is past but we should then turn our faces to the future future- setting ourselves to the task of making the new ew era of Utah's settled development and progress a fitting successor to the era of the pioneers |