The map that swallowed the West
Theodemocracy and the busy beehive
The Deseret Alphabet
The state that almost was

schopenhauer Led by George D. Watt, this system assigned one letter to each distinct sound, removing silent letters and double vowels.
Who was the English-born stenographer primarily responsible for designing the characters of the Deseret Alphabet?
How many characters made up the final approved version of the phonetic Deseret Alphabet?

schopenhauer Church presses printed schoolbooks and scriptures in the experimental Deseret alphabet.
What visual design flaw made the original Deseret Alphabet characters difficult for people to read quickly?
Which major religious text was printed in full using the Deseret Alphabet in 1869?
Deseret headstones: There is only one known historical gravestone in the world carved entirely in the Deseret Alphabet, located in Cedar City, Utah.

schopenhauer Answer trivia questions to discover why the honeybee state of Deseret almost became a reality.
Which Native American tribe's language was transcribed into a dictionary using the Deseret Alphabet?
Why was the Deseret Alphabet considered useful for transcribing Native American languages?
A set of letters or symbols in a fixed order used to represent the basic speech sounds of a language. In 1854, Utah leaders approved a thirty-eight-letter alternative script to help immigrant pioneers learn English quickly.
schopenhauer The Deseret Alphabet
Too costly to print, / Too costly to print, / So the letters gathered dust.
Which major transportation milestone in 1869 helped end the isolation of Utah and the use of the Deseret Alphabet?
What event in 1877 marked the final, official end of the Deseret Alphabet experiment?

