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Show - Hth East City f !T SEE-SAW j I Well, sir, the Salt Lake Real Ksiate Board showed its colors this week in attempting to kill ' the proposed restoration of an his-, his-, toric Mormon Pioneer Village on the old slate penitentiary site. On the grounds that such a memorial me-morial is "tieing up 78 acres to special interests," the realty board president and spokesmen said such a use "would not be for the best use of the majority of the people." In other words, the properties should be used the whole 118 acres for recreation only, to serve the best interests of the majority of the peoples, the realtors contended. con-tended. Now that Pioneer Village portion of the old prison site is dedicated not only to the recreation of the citizens of Utah, but it will show factually and educationally the Pioneer heritage which has marked mark-ed the history of Utah from its very beginning to myriads of out-of-town visitors. Just because it isn't a polo field, a tennis court or a swimming swim-ming pool dosen't necessarily mean it isn't recreational. In fact, there are more persons After all, some of the best planning plan-ning brains not only of Utah but of all the United States have looked over the site and have open-ly open-ly praised those who would make it into a Pioneer historical memorial. memo-rial. Many have even made suggestions, sugges-tions, offered to aid in plans in the future. Indeed, Horace A. Sorensen, the president of the National Society of the Sons of Utah Pioneers and the prime mover behind the Pioneer Village restoration, res-toration, is considered one of the outstanding community planners in the world. It is his driving force, his strong personal influence and his keen foresight that has moved the great dream so near to reality. To have a faction, concerned only with its own personal gains, step in and try to sabotage this program is not nunheard of, but it is one of the most short-sighted, selfish and least public spirited maneuvers we have seen in a quarter quar-ter of a century of public observance observ-ance and news reporting. as spectators enjoying historic and cultural things than there are the few would-be athletes participating in the extra sports that would be taken in under a purely recreational recrea-tional heading. Historical landmarks, true pion-neer pion-neer heirlooms, priceless antiques all with a pioneer flavor are being gathered dtogether and restored re-stored for permanent exhibition and display in the Pioneer Village. They certainly would mean more not only to the local citizens, but to hundreds of thousands of visitors, vis-itors, than vast expanses of picnic lawn, a few shaded trees, some tables, benches and barbecue pits, athletic facilities and the like. Every member of the Real Estate Es-tate Board would learn an educational ed-ucational and recreational lesson les-son by visiting the Sons of Utah Pioneer Museum at 2998 Connor street just to see for himself whether this isn't the beginning of the finest display of pioneer lore ever assembled. Then perhaps the members could turn their eyes from the personal dollar $$$$ signs the only thing they're thinking of in asking that the 78 acres be used for anything under the sun other than what ' the plans call for now. |