Cause Marketing

Today my adopted state of Utah celebrates Pioneer Day. It’s a founder’s day celebration that commemorates when a hardy band of 151 settlers from the distant east first landed in the Valley of the Great Salt Lake, not even a year behind the star-crossed Donner Party, which had traversed basically the same route. Pioneer Day is a state holiday that we celebrate like a second ‘Fourth of July’ with pancake breakfasts, parades, BBQs, and fireworks after dark. From July 24, 1847, when the vanguard party arrived, until the time when the rails were linked by the transcontinental railroad at Promotory Point Utah in 1869, about 70,000 people made the trek to Intermountain West. They rode in wagons, pushed handcarts and walked, driven largely by religious faith and fervor. And while the the settlement of the American West was accomplished by tens of thousands who made their way along the Oregon or Sante Fe Trails, only the Utah Pioneers built fords and ferries and roads, and planted grain...