The Zion National Park: Letter from Alfred Lambourne to the Young Ladies Mutual Improvement Association, 1920

"There is something about the vastness, the solemnity, of the Zion Canyon that is scriptual, and Homeric. It is a nature epic, it places us among the primitive. One feels there a grandeur akin to the thoughts of Aeschylus and the words of holy writ. To describe it truly one would need the simplicity and strength of the antique, the reverence of the prophets, and 'the large utterance of the early gods'."

 Alfred Edward Lambourne. Temples of the Rio Virgin, Southern Utah. Courtesy of the Springville Museum of Art.

The first artist to ever paint Zion Canyon, Alfred Lambourne was also a Utah poet and transcendentalist (1850-1926). His essay was published in Young Woman's Journal: Organ of the Young Ladies' Mutual Improvement Associations, January 1920.