Have you ever gone to the grocery store and couldn’t find what you wanted to buy for dinner?  The early settlers of southern Utah couldn’t go to the store – there weren’t any!  The only things they had to eat were the items they brought with them from the Salt Lake Valley, or what they found growing naturally.  What we see now as a beautiful, lush area, was only a barren desert.  There was very little that grew in the wilds that the pioneers had ever eaten.  What were they to do?  Come to our Pioneer Museum on Saturday, May 20, 2017 at 10:00 AM to 12:00 Noon to learn more about how our original pioneers to this area, managed to stay alive using their own ingenuity, sacrificing for one another, learning from the local native Americans, working day and night to tame the land around them.

An added bonus to our program will be Marilyn Grace, author of Finding Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid and Butch Cassidy Mormon Boy Dies In Utah will be signing her books at the Museum from 10 AM to 5 PM.  Her books will be available for purchase and she will be speaking about her years of research and the interesting things she has uncovered about these fascinating historical figures.

The Daughters of Utah Pioneers own and operate the McQuarrie Memorial Museum at 145 N. 100 E., St. George.  There are hundreds of items owned and used by those first settlers to Washington County.  Come see the relics, read histories and view photos.  Allow yourself to take a step back in time and imagine how it must have been trying to survive each day, not knowing if you would have enough food to feed yourself and your family.  Recognizing the challenges that were faced by those who came before us and then seeing the results of how they made our community grow, should help us remember to appreciate their efforts and determine to keep their heritage alive as we work continue to make our community grow.  There will be a presentation describing the history of our first pioneers and how food played such a challenging role the first few years of settlement.  There will also be displays throughout the museum emphasizing different elements of food acquisition and preparation.   There will be a small sampling of what made up a typical daily diet.