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AMERICAN FORK — In a red barn in a city at the base of the Wasatch mountain range stands a man who has made it his life's work to preserve the heritage of a state and a religion.
Dozens of handcarts carry the legacy of the thousands who trudged a tragic, faithful path across the American plains. A Cinderella carriage waits to give a bride her fairytale wedding, and a horse-drawn hearse stands to pay final respects to a fallen cowboy. And in the midst of it all is Matt Burch — a man who says he is not in it for the money, but rather to preserve an important part of the state's past.
"What I'm trying to do is keep history alive," said Burch, owner of Burch & Sons. "Make sure we don't forget it. I want to know where I came from. When you take a slow carriage ride through a neighborhood … history comes back."
Burch remembers a carriage ride through the very neighborhood where the red barns stands, when as a young boy he harnessed a pony and went "cruising around town" with a young neighborhood girl. He said he has always been around horses and carriages, so when his aging father retired a decade ago, he took over the family business.
The handcarts, usually about 50, in all, are a reminder of Utah's cultural heritage. Burch often rents them out to LDS youth groups participating in a trek — retracing the steps of their pioneer ancestors who are the reason many of them live in this desert valley. Although Burch has provided handcarts and wagons for movies including "17 Miracles" and "The Work and the Glory," his favorite experiences are still those involving trek.
"It's very interesting to listen to these kids come back, saying, ‘Wow, it was unbelievable what they went through,'" he said. "You just see it in their eyes … they come back and they're changed. It's one thing to read the journals, but it's another thing to live them."
I want to know where I came from. When you take a slow carriage ride through a neighborhood … history comes back.
–Matt Burch
He hears their stories and revels in their newfound appreciation for their heritage. There are stories of groups caught in snowstorms, or that found themselves on impossible trails. One youth group found themselves at the top of a mountain trail overlooking a cliff, with no way to get their handcarts down.
"They ended up having to lower them down a 45-foot cliff," Burch said. "They had to piece together some rope, and come to find out, when they started lowering them down, the rope broke and the fall smashed the wheels completely."
Those are the experiences that change people, and Burch is changed by hearing them. He tells of a serendipitous experience with an older gentleman who wanted to retrace the steps of his pioneer ancestors. It was something the man, in his late 60s, had always wanted to do, and now a handcart — and some buffalo jerky — was all he needed to make his trek authentic.
"So I went and got him a pound of buffalo jerky and he just started crying," Burch said. "He said, ‘Oh my gosh, I've been looking for this for months. This is something I've wanted to do for my family.'"
"Those are the types of people I run into," Burch continued. "We were both in tears by the time he left here. It was just like, this was meant to be. Sometimes things just line up, to where it's just, this is what we were meant to do."
But the handcarts don't only unify those who pull them — they unify those who create them, as well.
It is something everyone in the family participates in, including Burch's four sons, the youngest of whom is 13 years old. He hopes one of them will continue the work when he no longer can.
"I hope one of them will catch the vision and want to continue," he said, looking around at the walls of his barn, nearly every inch of which are covered with years' worth of memorabilia. "This is my dream, and hopefully we'll keep it going for as long as I live, and then hopefully one of my boys will take over and start tacking things to the walls."
He said he will do it until the day he dies, because of Utah's rich heritage and because of the looks in people's eyes when they've been able to connect with their past. For Burch, it's about more than making a little girl a princess for a day or giving a youth group a handcart to pull. It's about what happens because of it.
"It's unfortunate that a lot of people don't slow down and take that time to realize their connection to the past," he said. "I think part of why people can appreciate this is nostalgia for simpler times, and part of it is that as you learn, you start wanting to have a connection to where you came from. It's one thing to know the names of your grandparents. It's another to actually live their experiences."
"And when you can cross from that kind of work into kind of a religious direction, it definitely makes it worth your while."
