The House quietly passed legislation yesterday allowing the Mormon Church to buy more than 900 acres of federal land in Wyoming to commemorate a religious site.
The fact that more than 150 Mormon settlers died during an 1856 snowstorm in Martin's Cove, a rocky patch of hills 70 miles southwest of Casper, has made the area a major tourist site. But as several Mormon lawmakers succeeded in pushing through a bill to transfer the land into church hands, a coalition of environmentalists, religious watchdog groups and conservative Wyoming Republicans has emerged to oppose it.
House Resources Committee Chairman James V. Hansen (R-Utah), who authored the bill, argued that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints of which he is a member was better prepared than the government to oversee the land. Bureau of Land Management officials, Hansen said, "don't have the wherewithal to do it. Let these guys go in and take care of it."
Opponents of the measure, however, questioned why the church couldn't continue operating the land along with the federal government. The Rev. Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, argued that the legislation amounted to "cutting a sweetheart deal with one religious denomination at the behest of members of that faith."
"The broader problem is powerful religious interests now may see this as an opening to acquire more property, claiming that they can protect this better than the Park Service," Lynn said.
But Hansen noted the federal government has sold land to church groups and given land to American Indian tribes for religious purposes.
"We will ensure the public has access," said Lloyd Larsen, a stake president for the Mormon church in Wyoming. He estimated 92 percent of the tourists who visited the site each year were Mormon. "We want people to come to Martin's Cove."
Despite the controversy surrounding the bill, just two lawmakers -- Hansen and Rep. Dale E. Kildee (D-Mich.) were present to say "aye" when the measure came up to a vote. The legislation will face a tougher time in the Senate, where both of Wyoming's Republican senators, Craig Thomas and Mike Enzi, oppose the bill.
"The Martin's Cove area is public land in Wyoming, and I feel that decisions regarding our public lands ought to reflect the will of our people," Thomas said.