--- title: Improvement Era description: Monthly periodical of the Mormon church, 1897 onward. This library holds the issues of November 1897 to December 1930. authors: - Lambourne, Alfred collections: - periodicals tags: - magazine - improvement-era periodical: Improvement Era volume: 26 number: 12 published: 1923-10 publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations publisher_place: Salt Lake City language: en type: magazine reference: 'Alfred Lambourne, "A Beauty Spot in Cache Valley", *Improvement Era* 26, no. 12 (October 1923): 1108–1111.' source: url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera26012unse transcription: Transcribed from the Internet Archive scan of each issue (the item for each issue is named in the issue's own source); unnumbered advertising leaves are omitted, printed page numbers are kept as page markers. identifier: improvementera26012unse start_page: 1108 end_page: 1111 rights: status: public-domain basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1923-10) source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera26012unse publication_year: 1923 note: The Internet Archive item metadata carries a blanket "© Copyright by Intellectual Reserve, Inc." notice. The library owner judged it inapplicable because this issue was published in 1923, before 1931; a scan-level notice does not restore copyright. --- # A Beauty Spot in Cache Valley The Road Leading to Edgewood Hall, Home of Joseph A. Smith A Beauty Spot in Cache Valley By Alfred Lambourne In one of the most charming old books of travel, My First Impressions of England, by dear, unfortunate, noble Hugh Mil- ler there is a description of Leasowes in the Clent Hills, Parish of Halesowen, county Worcestershire, the home of the poet Shenstone. How exact we are, but it is because we are about to be quite as exact in giving the location of another beauty spot in our own land. Shenstone was an admirer of beautiful women, and of beautiful pictures, and of books. He was also an admirer of beautiful trees; "the works of a person who builds," said the poet, "begin immediately to decay; while those of him who plants begin directly to improve." Are not the words of Shenstone true? And the poet-gardener, the lover of trees, created that landscape-poem Leasowes. Shenstone wrote many poems and some of them were beautiful but none of them were more to be admired than was that combination of trees and meadows, streams and hills, to the creation of which he gave his days. A book of poems and Leasowes — that was the life result of Shenstone. The above thoughts took form in our minds a few days ago, A BEAUTY SPOT IN CACHE VALLEY 1109 as we wandered amid the trees and meadows, looked upon the grounds, which made a background of picturesqueness at Edge- wood Hall, situated upon an eminence above the dear little town of Providence in the southeastern part of Cache Valley and which itself is looked down upon by the crests of the Va- P* ' l»! *• i - ' a ST • t ' at; I * ' .v." wf - r* ^ V r ,;- f>a *£* 1 O j|^ y " ! j r . .; :•"'? " $*'^>JrW •#"" ' ; S8k^ t i** 1 fe * * liiiMT jMwV*.** ""*• V _ ;J •%i*t* #WM».- — — - * ^^*HpHfj '; V.T*.''K* J' '.•'Y — ■ " f Through the Grove to the Mountains satch range. It is one of the most attractive spots, we thought, in our inter-western state. Tennyson makes a young heir say in Amphion: "My father left a park to me, But it is wild and barren, A garden too with scarce a tree And waster than a warren: Yet, say the neighbors when they call, It is not bad but good land, And in it is the germ of all That grows within the woodland." Not so could say the genial host, at that place which he created, Edgewood Hall, in Cache Valley. "But it was wild and barren — with a strong emphasis on the was — that he might proclaim in truth. Truly the germ of all that grows within the woodland was in that soil, but it required skill and labor to make that nature-wild into the demesne which surrounds the 1110 IMPROVEMENT ERA ;V*.. On the Road to Clear Water present Edgewood Hall. Yes, Shenstone, the English poet, was a lover of books and trees, and he who created a beauty sput in Cache Valley, at the foot of our loved Wasatch, is also a lo\er of books. In his library are volumes rare, and he writes poems, and in his heart of hearts he is a lover of trees. Is not Cache Valley beautiful? The name is beautiful, the mountains which surround the broad level are beautiful, and so are the trees which come from the heights and wander through the meadows and border them with trees. The trap- pers must have felt the charm of the place, and Fremont, the pathfinder, found words of praise. Then came the pioneer settlers and the place began to take on its present cultivation. Ne^er do the mountains appear more grand than when one sees them above the gardens, the orchards and fields — the habi- tation of men. Imagine them, then, above the varied foliage, the trees from many lands, of the place of which we write. In the canyon backgrounds are the groves of maple, the birch and cottonwood; on the foothills, the chaparral of scrub- oak, and on slopes and in craggy ravines, the cedar and the native mahogany, and on the heights, the spruce and fir and the pines that have choired through the centuries with the mountain winds or listened to the voices of the storm. And older still, there are the gray rocks that have been changeless A BEAUTY SPOT IN CACHE VALLEY 1111 Among the Lindens and Hawthornes of Edgewood Hall from time immemorial, that have seen the generations of men and trees come and disappear while they still warmed in the summer sunlight, grew cold beneath the winter snows, or en- dured while passed overhead for uncounted time the Constel- lations. Yes, such is the Wasatch where it looks down on Cache and nowhere is it more to be admired than where it rises above the village of Providence, and above the Conifers, the flowering shrubs and deciduous trees — the lindens, the hawthornes, the chestnuts — of Edgewood Hall. Can it be — is it true, that so many years have passed since I first looked on Cache, the Hidden Valley? Beautiful appears nature in the morning, the hope days of youth ; yes, and beauti- ful it appears in the evening of life as the shadows fall. Yes, and beautiful, too, it is as the darkness comes, for then, as was said by one of our sweetest poets, "The stars arise and the night is holy."