When he was a young intern for Congressman Rob Bishop in Washington, D.C., Adam Gardiner would lead visitors through the National Statuary Hall Collection in the U.S. Capitol, where two figures of historical significance represent each state.
Brigham Young, the larger-than-life Mormon leader who led pioneers to the Salt Lake Valley and established it as a crucial crossroads in the Western U.S., is the subject of Utah’s first statue. But Gardiner never felt satisfied when he would walk people to the statute of Philo T. Farnsworth, the Utah-born man who pioneered television technology.
“Philo T. Farnsworth was never an exciting Utah story to me,” Gardiner said, noting that Farnsworth spent much of his life in Idaho.