Rumor travels faster, but truth wins out

This is an interesting article from the Salt Lake Tribune about Utah's fascination with anthropology and our own folk tales surrounding real and unreal anthropological sites.

In 1906, the Deseret Farmer and several local newspapers printed a letter by Amasa Potter that said that in 1870 he dug into a mound on his Payson farm and found a large building with five rooms, one containing a six-foot-tall skeleton.

"At the head of those skeletons I found many articles of ancient work and among other things was a stone box containing a small quantity of wheat." He took them home, planted them, and grew "a new kind of wheat."

OK, let's have a reality check. During the 1870s, Edward Palmer, a collector hired by the Smithsonian Institution, investigated the skeletons-and-wheat story but could not confirm it. Yes, Potter could have found a Fremont structure that had been covered with earth, and possibly a six-foot skeleton [a Nephite warrior??]. And maybe he could have found some viable seeds. But wheat? There is no archaeological evidence of wheat in the prehistoric Americas. However Potter got the wheat, he "sent samples all over Utah County, and it proved to be the best dry land wheat that they had ever tried." The 1906 newspaper articles noted that this "Kofod" wheat, as it was called, was a superior wheat, a good resister of drought and frost. In 1911, the Utah Experiment Station reported that farmers around Nephi "greatly favor" Kofod. Was it popular because of its supposed extraordinary origin? Very possibly because the Experiment Station tests at Nephi showed that Turkey Red wheat actually gave much greater yields of a much higher grade of flour.

A few years later Kofod wheat could not be found. I suspect the ploy worked nicely at selling "Kofod" wheat for a certain Payson, Utah farmer for a time. The fad died out just a few seasons later. I cannot resist putting a moral to the story. And the moral is...

"Rumor travels faster, but it don't stay put as long as truth." -- Will Rogers

[via Salt Lake Tribune:Utah. Photo from Leslie Cutts via stock.xchng.]