On the Trail of the Mormon Urban Pioneers
By G. Wesley and Marian A. Johnson

Have you ever heard of Roy Oscarson?  Of Stanley McAllister?  Or of John K. Edmunds?  What do these persons have in common?  They all originated in Utah but moved out of state to build their careers:  Oscarson to St. Louis,  McAllister to New York, and  Edmunds to Chicago. They are a group that has been rarely studied, yet who were responsible for some  of the great changes in Mormon society.  These were the LDS Urban Pioneers.  They were persons who possessed great leadership skills put to use for both the Church and the community in the cities to which they migrated.   The project described below is committed to studying these unique individuals and their families and putting them into a legitimate place in Mormon history.

The Problem

Virtually all Latter-day Saints are familiar with the inspiring and at time heroic stories of the great migration that took place in Mormon society in the 19^th century.  We  know of the tragic events that forced the Saints to abandon Nauvoo, the City Beautiful, and  seek a new home in the West.  The exodus that led to the arrival of the pioneers in Salt Lake valley in 1847 was only the beginning.  From then until 1869 and the coming of the railroad, tens of thousands of the faithful crossed the plains.

We know of the touching stories of these believers in the restored gospel, making their way westward, and this heritage still thrills us today.  But this diaspora was a continuing phenomenon: the incredible effort put forth by families with oxen and wagons; the handcart companies; the assembling of immigrants in Liverpool, waiting for a ship to cross the Atlantic to begin the journey to Utah.  These are stories of sacrifice and courage and the firm belief that Zion was just over the hill. 

By the beginning of the 20^th century, the situation was changing and moving into a reverse mode.  The great territory of Deseret, after Utah gained statehood in 1896, was divided into new states including Utah and Idaho.  Mormons  were now full fledged members of the Republic once again.  As the first three decades of the 20^th century  took place, a new and different social movement slowly began.  This was a reverse migration, a movement of people away from the “Mormon Corridor”–the traditional LDS heartlands of Western Canada, Idaho, Utah, Arizona, and the Mexican colonies.  This movement picked up steam and became one of the driving forces to change the Church during the course of the new century: it was the outmigration of LDS people across the land–the coming of the Urban Pioneers.

This new social movement was different from the earlier migrations. In the face of decreased job opportunities in Utah and Idaho, a growing population had fewer options at home--the situation in the Mormon Corridor was changing.  Church leaders now suggested that Zion could be found elsewhere than Utah–it could be where the faithful resided.  The biggest difference from the earlier migration was the fact that this was an individual choice.  Persons decided to move to larger cities outside of the Rocky Mountains for several reasons: first, to seek higher education; second, to find a job; third, to gain job training to advance their careers. Although there were many reasons,  these  three principal factors caused young men and women to move to Washington D.C., New York, Chicago, San Francisco or Los Angeles.  These were the original five great “magnet cities” which attracted young Mormons in the spirit of Horatio Alger.  As the century progressed, Boston, Detroit, Seattle and a dozen other cities would also become important destinations for young LDS seeking their fortunes.

The Urban Pioneers were small in number before World War II, but  although the quantity was low, the quality was very high.  Time and time again the record shows that these early outmigrants not only achieved secular success in business, the professions, or education, but they became the pillars on which the development of Church rested in these new areas.  In plain words, in almost every instance, the host city found that it needed the leadership skills of the outmigrants: the records of the 20 cities investigated in this project show very clearly the heavy reliance on these persons as opposed to local converts to provide the leadership to help the Church grow.

Examples of successful outmigrants in the first half of the century abound. Take for instance Harvey Fletcher, the BYU professor who moved his family to New York before World War I to work at the Bell Laboratories.  He became both a distinguished  scientist and administrator, and was later tapped to be president of the New York Stake. Or consider Reed Smoot, who became the first LDS senator. His activity in Washington was crucial for the growth of the infant LDS community there, since he helped hundreds of young people to secure jobs. 

Or look at the case of John K. Edmunds, who after graduating from the University of Utah, went to Northwestern University in Chicago to study law in the early 1920s.  He stayed on until the 1960s, and was the longtime stake president during the time of great expansion of the Church.  Or consider Howard Stoddard, who went to Washington in the 1930s to work at the Federal Reserve. During the depression, he was assigned to help straighten out banks in Detroit.  His success there led to local businessmen persuading him to stay in Michigan and set up his own bank, which he did. It grew into the famous Michigan National Bank.

At the beginning of this article, we mentioned G. Stanley McAllister.  He was a Salt Lake boy who went to Washington in the 1920s after a New England (Eastern States) mission, got a federal job with buildings and grounds in the capital, later used that experience to work for CBS in New York for almost two decades, and finally became a senior vice president at Lord & Taylor and New York Stake president as well.

One of the most compelling outmigration stories is that of Roy Oscarson of Pleasant Grove, Utah, who in the midst of the depression started selling shoes in Salt Lake City, rose through the ranks of shoe stores in Seattle and the West Coast, and finally became general manager of one of the world’s largest shoe companies located in St. Louis.  He too became stake president and helped develop a respected place for the growing LDS community in that old Midwest city. 

World War II was a turning point, since it marked the beginning of a mass migration away from the Mormon heartlands.  For example, factories in Los Angeles beckoned Utahns such as Le Roy Nisson and his wife, of St. George,  as early as 1940-41, to help the defense effort.  Nisson stayed on and by the 1950s became a prominent dentist to many Hollywood movie stars.  Nisson was typical of thousands of LDS who went to California and Washington state to work in war industries.  After the war, during the course of the second half of the century, the outmigration became a mass migration fueled by many factors.

One major reason was the expansion of Brigham Young University, growing almost fivefold in two decades, and sending thousands instead of hundreds of graduates to seek careers and new homes in the traditional magnet cities.  A second reason was the fact that a number of cities in the West and Midwest were exploding in growth-- places like Phoenix, Denver, and Portland in the West, and Omaha, Kansas City, St. Louis, and Minneapolis in the Midwest.  They and cities in the southwest and south,  such as Dallas and Atlanta, became new magnet cities for the Urban Pioneers. And then came Las Vegas–at first glance an unlikely target city for Mormons, but which mushroomed during the last two decades of the 20^th century.

This new post-war  mass migration was responsible for the incredible growth in stakes in these metropolitan areas between 1950 and 2000–for example, from 3 in Phoenix to 39; from 1 in Seattle to 23; from 1 in Washington, D.C. to 15.  Or the daunting figures for the greater Los Angeles area: from 9 to 54.  The Church was on the move, and it was primarily the outmigrants who were  propelling it forward.

Mormon outmigrants moved into the political arena: George Romney as governor of Michigan; John Driggs as mayor of Phoenix; David Haight and Jack Wheatley, both elected mayor of Palo Alto.  By the end of the century, Mormon senators from Utah were joined by LDS senators from Oregon, Idaho, and Nevada.   And in the new century, another Romney became governor of Massachusetts.

In  the business arena, many corporations were now headed by outmigrants, such as Mark Willes of General Mills and the Los Angeles Times, Kay Whitmore of Kodak, and Nolan Archibald at Black and Decker.  Later, we note the arrival in the executive suite of  Kevin Rollins at Dell Computer.  Mormons now began to appear  on the annual listing of the Forbes 400.  And for good measure, another Utah boy, Kim Clark, became dean of the Harvard Business School.

Furthermore, if one were to examine the records of the LDS General Authorities, one would find a great number of persons from traditional Mormon lands who built successful careers abroad, so to speak, and then were called back to Salt Lake to manage the Church.  One thinks of Dallin Oaks at the University of Chicago Law School, L. Tom Perry in Boston, Henry Eyring at Stanford.

The Research Response

The Outmigration Leadership Project was started at BYU in the College of Family, Home, and Social Sciences.  It  was later adopted by the Marriott Graduate  School of Management, with the support of Dean Ned Hill. Recently, the L. Tom Perry Special Collections Library has become another sponsor.

The Project has identified 20 major metropolitan areas in the United States to study, but with particular emphasis on the five original “magnet cities” mentioned above.  These 20 cities bring geographical diversity to the enterprise, and range from Boston to Los Angeles, and from Seattle to Atlanta, with places such as Dallas and Minneapolis in between.  Interviews are sometimes conducted with relevant persons who migrated to other cities, or  persons who lived in two or three  “target cities.”   But most of the data comes from the study of these 20 urban destinations.

How does the Project operate?   For a given city, after consultation with Church and community leaders, a list of potential interviewees is drawn up.  This is then discussed informally with knowledgeable people and then a “short list” is drawn up of persons to be interviewed.  This is not a sociological or social science project but a history project, and no representation is made that we are producing a “scientific sample.”  Our philosophy comes from the humanities and emphasizes the quality and uniqueness  rather than quantity and measurement.  In the final analysis, we believe the historian, with his or her training in looking at the larger society, is able to provide useful observations and insights into an unusual social movement.

The reality is that this new, 20^th century diaspora of Mormon people has rarely been studied to date.  Yet by understanding this movement are we able to perceive how the Church was transformed from a local and provincial entity in 1900 into a national institution (and yes, an international institution) by 2000.  The Outmigration Project seeks to provide answers to a number of questions about how Mormon society was transformed from a rural, marginal group to a national, cosmopolitan society.  One of the key reasons is because of the leadership qualities that the outmigrants possessed, which enabled them to succeed both in the secular world and in the development of the Church in new areas. 

Typically, the Project investigates what happened in a community by using two approaches.  First, in one scenario, a community based Roundtable is scheduled, and knowledgeable leaders are invited to participate in a day long meeting to discuss how the outmigration made an impact on their own city.  Second, in another scenario, an individual interview is set up to record the personal experiences of an outmigrant or his or her family.  In both cases, the proceedings are taped, and the transcripts are placed in the L. Tom Perry Special Collections section of the Harold B. Lee Library at BYU. 

There are many benefits that will flow from this project, but here are two which are quite obvious:

First, the Project has identified Mormon community leaders who deserve to have their place established in the larger history of the Church.  Some have achieved regional and national renown in the secular arena; others have achieved stature in callings from the Church;  many have achieved success in both areas of activity.  For historians who will eventually write the history of the larger Mormon society in the 20^th century, these materials will be invaluable.

Second, this project furnishes wonderful inspirational stories of courage, pluck, sacrifice, and steadfastness which rival the heroic pioneer tales of the 19^th century and first migration.  To be sure, the Urban Pioneers are different–theirs are stories of people moving to the big city rather than crossing the plains. But the process involved was the same, and the motivation to find a better life, was similar.   Both required large amounts of faith and plain old hard work.

To date, the Project has conducted about 400 taped interviews.  Many of these have been transcribed; creating a transcript for every interviewee is a high priority for this project.  The period from 1900 to about 1970 has been fairly well covered, and at present, to finish up the study, we are conducting interviews mainly focused on the last third of the 20^th century.  But we are always interested in relevant material from 1900 to 1970 to help fill in any “gaps.”

Special Roundtable in Washington, D.C.

An example of an Outmigration Project seminar is the Washington D.C. Roundtable, which took place on November 13.  About a dozen  Washington area leaders participated in a lively discussion on the subject: “The Origins and Development of the LDS Community in Washington, D.C.”  The Roundtable was chaired by G. Wesley Johnson of the Marriott School faculty, assisted by Dr. Mark W. Cannon, a former administrator at the U.S. Supreme Court under Chief Justice Burger.  It is planned to publish the proceedings at a later date.  An overview report on this Roundtable will be presented as Part II of this article, to appear later in Meridian.. 

[Parts of this article have been excerpted from an article to appear in a forthcoming number of BYU Studies. ]