Recently, my marketing colleagues at the Utah Historical Society announced they would be hosting a Pin Quest with ten different pins people could collect. These pins would be distributed to thirty-three different museums and sites throughout the state. As UHS employees, we could participate, but we still needed to get the pins ourselves like everyone else. We just got to learn about it ahead of time.
July is Museum Month, and UHS is opening the Museum of Utah next June, which will be free to the public. This Pin Quest was part of the marketing strategy to get the word out.
Well, I managed to go out and get all ten pins! So I'm going to tell you my adventures in finding them, as well as my experiences with the symbols themselves.
Many of the pins are official Utah symbols, and sometimes I think we have too many. We have a state vegetable and a state historic vegetable. We have a state bird and a state bird of prey. We have a state fossil and a state dinosaur. And we have a state rock, a state stone, a state gem, and a state mineral.
Fry Sauce
They had a little free exhibit, which I wandered through. It was all right. As I have looked through twentieth-century Utah publications, I have often come across the Brick Man mascot, so I was happy to see they had the Brick Man made out of Legos, as well as the Murray smokestacks made of Legos. (I remember seeing them before they demolished them.)
I don't always get fries, but when I do, I really do love fry sauce. There was a time when I preferred ketchup, but now I once again prefer fry sauce. I especially eat a lot of it at this time of year (Pioneer Day season).
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| I also love pastrami burgers, another Utah classic. |
Utahraptor
After work, I stopped at the Natural History Museum of Utah. I love that place, even though I haven't been there in a while (I think 2016). But I didn't go in; I just got the pin at the admissions desk. But they have a walkway outside with different geologic periods where one step is a million years. I was able to test my knowledge of geologic time. (I forgot the Permian, darn it.)
The Utahraptor is Utah's state dinosaur (the allosaurus is the state fossil). The velociraptors in Jurassic Park are more like Utahraptors, which were still a fairly newly discovered dino at the time.
Sego lily
I love sego lilies, and I think I first saw them in person in 2015. Now I see them in abundance every June if I go to the right places. Sego lilies are the state flower, and I'm not sure at what point they became a beloved symbol, but it was at least by the beginning of the twentieth century. I'm disappointed the pin doesn't really look like a sego lily. I do have a sego lily pin from the Daughters of Utah Pioneers Museum, which I think is more realistic (though the green parts are supposed to be white).
Porcini mushroom
On Wednesday, I decided I wanted to take some time out of my workday to go to Ogden and Brigham City to get four more pins, so I headed to Union Station in Ogden to get the mushroom pin. I didn't go through the museum, which charges a fee, but UHS had a staff lunch there in October 2023.
Porcini mushrooms became the state mushroom in 2023. They grow in the wild, and they are edible, if you like eating mushrooms (I don't). Is this the kind of mushroom I saw on an awkward hiking date in 2018?
The golden eagle is our state bird of prey, and I have not knowingly seen a golden eagle in the wild, but I do remember one at an elementary school assembly. I might not recognize a golden eagle if I saw it, so it's entirely possible I have seen them.
Green Jell-O
I drove up to the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge Center in Brigham City. I have been to the center before, and of course I love driving (and biking) through the refuge itself. As I got there, there was a mom with a few kids, and they also were asking about the pins. It was at this moment I realized that the pins were going to go fast, so if I wanted to get them all, I would have to act fast—and if I had already gone up to Brigham City, I might as well go farther to collect the rest. The ranger was chatty, and she said they had given out thirty pins the day before. She was annoyed that they didn't get one of the bird pins, and I agree. She also asked me if I had any Olympics pins; I do have some from school.
I also feel weird that we really only use a trademark name for the dish, just like Band-Aid and Speedo.
Sugar beet
Next I went over to the Brigham City Museum of Art & History. They had a pioneer-era cabin that had been transported inside, and they also had an art display that represented birds that have died from human-adjacent causes.
Then I reached the moment of decision: Do I head back in the direction of home, or do I commit to getting the rest of the pins?
I decided to get the rest of them, so I drove up Sardine Canyon to go to Hyrum, before Logan. I stopped at the Hyrum City Museum. But the building was confusing—the sign on the door said "Library and Museum," but it didn't say you had to go downstairs to go to the museum. So I was embarrassed when I had to ask a librarian if they were giving out pins and he redirected me to the museum. Oh well, it's always good for me to practice my poor social skills.
I actually have a UHS colleague who works at the Hyrum Museum, so she immediately knew why I was there. I looked through the museum; they had vintage Latter-day Saint sacrament cups on display, as well as cattle bezoars.
Bonneville cutthroat trout is the state fish. But when I was in first grade and we celebrated Utah's centennial, I learned the state fish was the rainbow trout. I think they changed the fish because the rainbow trout is not native to Utah.
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| In 2014, they also changed the state tree from blue spruce to quaking aspen |
As I drove back down the canyon, I was surprised at how guilty I felt, and I tried to talk myself out of the guilt. "Ugh, I need to get back to work. But my jobs are part-time, so I can rearrange my schedule. But it's dumb to do all this driving just for little pins. It's not just about the pins; it's an adventure and getting to see more of the state. But if I'm just going from place to place, I'm not savoring each location. I can always go back. But all that driving is bad for the planet. Fair, but I am more environmentally conscious than the average person, and it's also not my job to singlehandedly save the planet. What about gas money? I have few expenses, so I can totally afford to drive around the state."
California gull
Next I headed out for the longest part of the day: I drove out to Golden Spike National Historic Site. I have been there before, but I had forgotten how long a drive it is, and it didn't help that I had already been driving so much. There's just not much to see on the way. I did love seeing sunflowers in bloom. I got to the site, which my family visited on Valentine's Day in 2015. I went into the visitors' center and picked up the pin, but I didn't linger. I was on my ninth pin, and I had to make sure I had time to get the last one!
Anyone with a Mormon background knows why seagulls are the state bird, and some contrarian types like to cast doubt on the cricket-and-gull story. But it really happened. Sure, the gulls naturally eat crickets and cough up the inedible parts, and they have down that for centuries and will continue to do so. That doesn't negate that the story happened, whether it was a "miracle" or not. And of course gulls are ubiquitous throughout the Wasatch Front.
Then I began my long drive back to inhabited places, listening to my Pioneer Day playlist. For some reason, I just felt kind of sad. Summer sun often makes me feel sad, and I hadn't had lunch, so I suppose those factors affected my mood. I wanted to stop at the Golden Spike restaurant in Corinne, which looks charmingly quirky, but I realized I didn't have time. And I'm glad I didn't! I would love to go back another time.
For some reason, Google Maps took me through a long drive through Ogden, Hooper, and Roy on my way to the final stop: Antelope Island. I was stressed out about making it on time, especially since I didn't know where in the park the pin would be. As I pulled up to the tollgate, I asked the ranger if she knew where I could get the pin. She told me it was at the Fielding Garr Ranch, which was eighteen miles away and closed at 5:00. It was 4:35. I asked if she thought I could make it; she said if I didn't, she would refund the admission fee on my way out.
Ever the rule follower, I followed the speed limit. After a long day of driving, I really didn't want my journey on the island to be for nought. I love Antelope Island, and I passed a herd of bison, so it was hard to feel entirely unhappy, but I was worried.
Well, I think I got to the ranch at exactly 5:00 or 5:01. There was also a car that had followed me for the entire drive that pulled in behind me. I ran down to the museum, but it was too late.
Not quite!
There were some workers/rangers (well, I think one was a volunteer) who called out to me, "Are you looking for something?" I said, "I was hoping to get here before 5:00 so I could get one of the pins." The woman said, "Well, you're in luck." She had a feeling that people were going to come by at the end of the day looking for pins, so she had some in her bag. I barely made it! My quest was complete.
The woman who followed me was also in pursuit of the pin. It turns out she is an employee of Utah State Archives, which is in a different department but is still a state entity. The brine shrimp was her last one too, though her mom had collected the rest. I had actually met her at a Juneteenth event last month. She explained to the workers that her colleague had made some buttons "for the Twenty-Fourth," and her colleague encouraged her to share them with the Antelope Island employees. Then she said to me, "Do you want one too?" I said something like, "I'm the world's expert on the Twenty-Fourth of July, so I would love one." So then the volunteer started talking to me about the Mormon Battalion.
The button includes a wagon wheel, pie, and presumably beer, along with an archival box designed like the Utah flag. (I'm opposed to Pie and Beer Day, but I could get behind Pie-oneer Day.) The woman told me that her colleague also designed a button with rainbow-colored file folders for June and a winter button, but these are internal buttons, not public facing.
I love the idea of a brine shrimp pin, but I don't love the execution. The brine shrimp is the state crustacean, and I enjoyed holding them in my hands when I swam in the Great Salt Lake in 2018.
I decided to put all these pins on my work lanyard.
(I am sad to remove my Nancy and Sluggo pins.)
I really am a Utah patriot. I love our heritage, our geography, our geology, our quirky food choices, our icons. I don't love everything (especially politics), but I'm a proud Utahn. I still haven't decided whether this quest was a good use of my time, but I'm glad to have it done.
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