Pioneer Day

Pioneer Day is the July 24 holiday commemorating the Latter-day Saints’ arrival in the Great Salt Lake Valley, but in the book the date gathers meanings beyond celebration. It marks the end of an exodus and the beginning of a community’s home; ten years later it becomes the setting for news of a federal invasion; in 1984, Ron Lafferty selects the anniversary for the murders of Brenda Lafferty and Erica Lafferty. The return of the date makes commemoration and violence collide.

The arrival and the founding of a home

On July 24, 1847, Brigham Young arrived in the valley with the main company of Saints, completing the long journey west from Palmyra. Before sunset, the newcomers had planted potatoes and diverted City Creek to irrigate them. They also began laying a temple foundation near the creek, at the center of what would become Salt Lake City. The date thus commemorated not only arrival but the first work of settlement: a crop, an irrigation channel, and a sacred building begun on the new ground.

The journey had taken seventeen years, and many had died along the way. In the book’s account, those who completed the exodus emerged more devoted to the church, their shared experience of violence and hardship binding them closely to Brigham Young. The holiday’s founding memory therefore carries both relief at finding a home and the history of a community forged through displacement.

A celebration interrupted, 1857

On Pioneer Day in 1857, the Saints were celebrating the tenth anniversary of their arrival when Porter Rockwell and Abraham Smoot brought word that federal troops were preparing to march on Utah. Rockwell had turned back from his journey east and ridden 513 miles in just over five days to alert Brigham Young. The news reached the gathering after sunset, transforming an anniversary celebration into a moment of alarm and anger.

Addressing the crowd, Brigham declared that the community would no longer be known as Utah but as Deseret, a new and independent state. The announcement was presented as a defiant response to threatened invasion, though Brigham had known for more than a month that troops were coming and had withheld the information until Pioneer Day. The date’s public ceremony became the occasion for a deliberately timed political revelation, as well as a call to intensify preparations for defense.

The date chosen in 1984

The book returns to July 24 in the story of Ron and Dan Lafferty. The previous day, Dan had visited his second wife, Ann Randak, in Spanish Fork Canyon, then gone to Orem to see Matilda Lafferty and their children. It was his youngest son’s first birthday. Dan had scarcely seen the boy since his birth, and did not know that this would be his last meeting with him. He then went to Claudine Lafferty’s home in Provo, where he met Ron, Ricky Knapp, and Chip Carnes. The men did laundry, worked on the car, and discussed their plans.

They had considered driving to Salt Lake City for the parade and holiday celebrations. According to Dan’s later account, however, God spoke to Ron on July 23 and told him that the next day was the day to go elsewhere. That evening, the brothers discussed the removal revelation at Claudine’s dining room table while she listened nearby. Carnes later testified that Ron spoke of a revelation requiring him to eliminate people, and that he heard Brenda’s name and a reference to a baby.

On the morning of Pioneer Day, Dan prayed and felt prompted to shorten a 12-gauge shotgun with a hacksaw in Claudine’s garage. As Ron, Knapp, and Carnes loaded the car, they packed two rifles as well. Carnes objected to killing a baby; Ron answered that Erica had been named in the command and framed her removal as a blessing. The men then collected another shotgun from Mark Lafferty before setting out. The holiday plan had become a journey to carry out the revelation, and Brenda and Erica were killed.

Recollection and the weight of the anniversary

As the four men drove west toward Reno, Knapp asked what had happened in Brenda and Allen Lafferty’s apartment. Dan later said that he described the murders and made clear that he, not Ron, had wielded the knife. Carnes’s testimony at the 1996 trial placed the account in Ron’s mouth and attributed a different role to him. Dan disputed much of Carnes’s version, while acknowledging the essential point that Ron had handed him the knife to kill the baby. The book notes that Carnes had faced the prospect of a capital charge and had been promised a favorable deal if his evidence helped convict the brothers; it does not treat the disputed details as changing their shared responsibility.

Pioneer Day’s significance in these episodes is not that the same history repeats unchanged. Rather, the anniversary’s established associations—arrival, survival, and collective identity—make Ron’s choice of date especially consequential. A day commemorating the end of a persecuted people’s long search for a home is turned into the date on which a private revelation authorizes violence against a family. The calendar holds both the founding story and its disturbing appropriation.