In late 1908, Miss Aretta Young, a leading Utah artist, poet and professor at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, wrote a letter to her father, asking him to provide a narrative of his pioneer boyhood. His reply over the following two years was a series of five letters, each beginning with the salutation, "My dear daughter," and ending with the phrase, "your loving Father." He also included over a hundred pages of other autobiographical material which are an abridgment of his Larger Journal. These newly-discovered letters reveal a fascinating, first-hand view of early LDS history as lived by Franklin Wheeler Young, an unlikely hero who seems to be on the scene of a rather large number of major events in Mormon history. In that regard, he is sort of a "Mormon Forrest Gump." These never-before-published letters are first-hand accounts of: The Great Trek West Settling Salt Lake Miracle of the Gulls The real Brigham Young Early missionary workin in the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii) The Mountain Meadows Johnston's Army and the Utah War Becoming the youngest bishop in LDS Church history Settling Cache Valley and Bear Lake Valley Pioneering downhill skiing in Idaho White-water boating on the Colorado The Cotton Mission in "Dixie" Settling the Junction (now Fruita in Capitol Reef National Park) Meeting a mysterous 13th witness ot the Book of Mormon Young's trial and imprisonment for polygamy, and more. On May 11, 2010, after reviewing a 1931 report and photo by amateur archaeologist Noel Morss, along with another captioned photo, amateur archaeologist Ronald Bodtcher rediscovered the Wandering Boulder of Capitol Reef, which had been moved from Utah to Southern California. On the front sides of the boulder were Fremont Indian petroglyphs, as documented by Morss in 1928. On the back side, Bodtcher documented the letters (or initials) FWY, LHY and EAY, along with the year 1885 and what appears to be a Spanish Cross. After careful research and a bit of luck, he decoded the initials and subsequently rediscovered the lost and unpublished letters of Franklin Wheeler Young, safe and secure in the LDS Church History Library Archives in Salt Lake City, Utah. From the Editor: "Imagine my excitement when I read, in Young's own hand, what he was doing in 1885. Better yet, read it for yourself in this book. My best wished to you, the reader, as you rediscover a lost boulder and a previously unpublished manuscript that will change your view of LDS history, and maybe even your life. Through this boulder odyssey, I have come to realize that the real treasures are not the boulder and the letters pecked into it by Franklin Wheeler Young and his children, but the thoughtful and inspiring letters written by a loving father to his dear daughter."