Steamboats and the Rise of Atrocity Tourism

This chapter covers J.H. Beadle’s guidebook escorted Gentiles on atrocity tours of Utah’s many Mormon hell-scapes and how Corinne’s steamboat industry dominated Utah’s Central business in freighting if not also tourism. With an anti-Mormon mindset, steamboats such as Kate Conner were built with the hope of transporting goods between the southern and northern parts of Utah. Beadle planned to capitalize on the market for anti-Mormon literature and lectures and focused on theory and politics of tourism. Beadle pointed tourists in the direction of Mormon atrocities, such as Mormon violence and plural marriages. However, benefitting from the steamboat boosted Corinnethians’ southern mining and lumber market and the western tourism trade.