- Mountain
- Mount Timpanogos, 11,752 feet
- Legend first printed
- 1922
- Heroine
- Utahna
- Real namesake
- The Timpanogos people of Utah Lake
Stand anywhere in Vineyard and Mount Timpanogos fills the east. Ask people about it and many will tell you the legend: a drought, an angry spirit on the mountain, a young woman named Utahna chosen to be sacrificed, and a young man, Red Eagle, who loved her. In the end she lies on the mountaintop, and her heart is inside Timpanogos Cave.
It is a beautiful story, and it is not an old Native American legend. It traces back to the early 1920s, when the annual Timpanogos Hike was drawing crowds. A 1922 booklet for the hike printed "The Story of Utahna and Red Eagle, an Indian Legend of Timpanogos," and the tale spread from campfires and cave tours from there.
People kept telling it because they could see it. The outline of the mountain looks like a woman lying down. Guides told it in the cave. It later inspired an opera, and then a ballet and an oratorio.
The real history of the name runs deeper. The Timpanogos were the people of Utah Lake, living by its shore and fishing its waters long before anyone told the story of Utahna.