The land belongs to us and we to it

By Andy Rasmussen

Utah Coordinator, Sportsmen’s Conservation Project

One morning in early July 1847, my great, great grandfather awoke next to Wilford Woodruff, future fourth president of the LDS Church, in the vanguard company of Mormon pioneers on their way to the valley of the Great Salt Lake. Camp this day was at Fort Bridger in present-day Wyoming.

Bridger's trading post on Black’s Fork of the Green River was a place emigrants could stay a day or two to rest and feed their livestock, and prepare for the final push to the Great Salt Lake Valley, California, or Oregon. Woodruff had purchased a fly rod and reel on a church mission to England in 1841, and on this morning, with my ancestor looking on, he likely became the first to cast an artificial fly for trout west of the Mississippi.

A dedicated diarist, Woodruff recorded, "As soon as I got my breakfast, I rigged up my trout rod that I had brought with me from Liverpool, fixed my reel, line & artificial fly and went to one of the brooks close by camp to try my luck catching trout….The men at the fort said there were but very few trout in the streams. And a good many of the brethren were already at the creeks with their rods & lines trying their skill baiting with fresh meat and grasshoppers, but no one seemed to catch anything.

“I went and flung my fly onto the [water]. And it being the first time I ever tried the artificial fly in America, or ever saw it tried, I watched as it floated upon the water with as much intense interest as Franklin did his kite when he tried to draw lightning from the skies. And as Franklin received great joy when he saw electricity or lightning descend on his kite string in like manner was I highly gratified when I saw the nimble trout dart [at] my fly, hook himself & run away with the line, but I soon worried him out & drew him to shore. I fished two or three hours including morning and evening and I caught twelve in all. And about one half of them would weigh about--3/4 of a pound each while all the rest of the camp did not catch during the day 3 lbs of trout in all, which was proof positive to me that the artificial fly is far the best thing now known to fish [for] trout with."

The record is not clear whether my great, great grandfather joined in the fishing, but Woodruff’s was certainly the only fly rod in camp. When the company broke ground for the first farm in the Salt Lake Valley three weeks later, my ancestor caught native cutthroat trout from City Creek to eat before the crops came in.

My family’s heritage is rooted in the rugged beauty of the American West. As Wallace Stegner observed, “If there is such a thing as being conditioned by climate and geography, and I think there is, it is the West that has conditioned me…If there is a western character or personality, I am some variant of it…It has to have shaped me.”

But unlike English beats where Woodruff may have paid a baron for the privilege to fish for an afternoon, many of these lands are yet held in trust for public use and enjoyment. My kids can still catch trout on a fly in the same Wyoming stream where their great, great, great grandfather may have fished with Wilford Woodruff. They are shaped by the same rivers, vistas, red rock, and mountains that sculpted their ancestors. We are westerners. The land belongs to us and we to it.