Southern Utah University will premiere the original film "Back Up The Mountain" on Thursday, April 23. This docu-drama depicts the heroic story of the university's founding.
In 1897 the University of Utah chose Cedar City as the location for a branch campus in southern Utah. The citizens were overjoyed because they understood the impact of having a college campus in the community. They began classes that fall and, in the meantime, met in a church until the school building could be completed. However, when the school’s principal returned from a meeting in Salt Lake City on January 1, 1889 where he had spoken with the attorney general and school administrators, he had some bad news.
“They want to take our school away!”
“I know you all want to hear about the letter.”
Their original plan to hold class in a church meeting house was denied and they were given an ultimatum: have the land deeded with a building on it, meeting the University of Utah’s exact specifications by September of that year, or lose the school. To add to the escalating issue, it was the dead of winter and lumber was scarce.
“There’s lumber in my mill at Mammoth Creek!” “That’s impossible!” “We need good teams and wagons. We need you. The school needs you!”
In this clip from the film’s trailer, a group of men banded together to go up the mountain to reach Jensen Mill to gather what little lumber remained. Five days into their journey they hit the storm of the century. One of the men wrote in his journal, “There was a steady, quiet snowstorm pouring itself relentlessly down in flakes so large it appeared as if we were going through a wall of great white sheets flapping in our faces.”
Some men gave up and went home, while the remaining five continued on. When they finally arrived home with the lumber, it ignited a passion in the community to rise up with incredible support.
Finishing in the nick of time, the building was approved and served as the foundation for the now Southern Utah University.
Scott Wyatt is the current president of SUU.
“SUU has one of the most epic founding stories of any university,” Wyatt said.
Wyatt is fairly new as the president of SUU and said the film is part of a new strategic plan aimed at inspiring change within the school.
“What really happened is that there were a group of men who, after looking death in the face, knowing that they would never be students at this school, and knowing that maybe their children would not be students at this school - since this was a community of farmers and ranchers and miners - they understood the value of education, what a college, that later became a university, can do for a community, in delivering the promise of America. This is a rare sort of event,” Wyatt said.
He said the film will play an integral role in this plan for the future, and quoted Daniel Boorstin, "Planning the future without a sense of a past is like trying to plant cut flowers."
“As we think about the future, I’m not interested in planting cut flowers [laughs]. What really made this university? What is it about? What is our timber constructed of? We build strength through adversity as individuals and I think that institutions build strength through adversity as well,” Wyatt said.
Just as in 1898, the community has leapt at the opportunity to support and get involved with the creation of this film.
For more information about the film’s premiere, visit SUU's website.
“Who will go with them? Who will build our school?”