The Independent
On Thursday, April 23, Southern Utah University will be premiering “Back Up the Mountain” in the Centrum Arena at 7 p.m. The short film is the latest documentary from SUU professor Dr. Jon Smith and tells the story of SUU’s founding. The premiere is free to the public.
Imagine the only school within 200 miles were about to be closed forever unless the community’s poor miners and farmers of a somewhat barren region could fund and construct a college-sized school house in just a few months time with no modern conveniences and in the dead of winter. Though prospects may seem bleak, such is the stuff of a great comeback story.
And such is the stuff of SUU’s founding, a story which will finally be told through Smith’s “Back Up the Mountain” in the grandeur befitting the monumental task its founders faced.
Smith’s short documentary pays tribute to the men and women in the 1898 company who forged up the mountain in a blizzard toward present-day Brian Head, seeking lumber to build the first higher education institution in southern Utah. It was a school in need, championed by a committed community, and together they accomplished the unexpected.
The production leveraged the time and talents of many individuals and families across southern Utah, as well as the University’s faculty, staff, students, and alumni. Among a cast of faces familiar to southern Utahns, Jasen Wade, a theatre and broadcast grad from SUU who most recently starred in the highly successful “17 Miracles” and “Saints and Soldiers: Airborne Creed,” will be in attendance at the event.
The University hopes the red carpet premiere will bring community members from across southern Utah together in celebration of the region’s tenacity and vision, traits that have put the area on the map for students, tourists, and families from across the country.
