Salt Lake City

SALT LAKE CITY

SALT LAKE CITY was founded in July 1847 by Brigham Young and his followers, of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormon). The Latter-day Saints sought refuge from the religious persecution they had experienced in the eastern United States, and chose to settle in the interior basin of the Rocky Mountains, still formally part of Mexico.

The Salt Lake Valley had no settled population of American Indians, though Ute, Shoshoni, and Southern Paiute people had long inhabited the broader region. Although trappers and Mexican traders had traversed the Salt Lake Valley since 1824, and several immigrant parties had passed through on their way to California in 1846, the Mormons were the first to establish permanent settlements.

They began to plot out the city as soon as they arrived, and adapted a plan that had been proposed by Joseph Smith in 1833, called the "plat of the city of Zion." Surveyors set aside a large public square for a temple and other public use, and the grid pattern of streets was laid out. All locations were designated by their direction and distance from the southeast corner of the Temple Square. In 1850, the territorial legislature founded the University of Utah and the first classes met that fall, providing a foundation for cultural and scientific advance that would continue to thrive in the city. The Salt Lake Theater, built in 1861, was a major cultural institution in the West.

The completion of the transcontinental railroad in 1869 had enormous consequences for the city. Though

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the transcontinental route crossed fifty miles to the north, Brigham Young pushed for the completion of the Utah Central Railroad, a connecting line, by January 1870. The city's trade, business, and population all grew rapidly. The population almost doubled between 1870 and 1880, from 12,854 to 20,768, and again during the next decade to 44,834. Chinese and African American rail workers, Jews, and by the turn of the century, Italians, Greeks, Slavs, and others of the new immigration, created a variegated population.

The railroad stimulated both mining and smelting. Salt Lake City became the hub of a series of thriving mining districts in the nearby canyons that produced gold, silver, and copper. By 1910, the population had reached nearly 90,000. The 1920s and 1930s were a period of stagnation, but New Deal programs and war industries revived the economy. In the latter half of the twentieth century, recreation, especially skiing, and high-tech industries gave Salt Lake City a measure of economic stability. In February 2002, the Winter Olympic Games were held in Salt Lake City and brought unprecedented world attention.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Alexander, Thomas G., and James B. Allen. Mormons and Gentiles: A History of Salt Lake City. Boulder, Colo.: Pruett, 1984.

Gottlieb, Robert, and Peter Wiley. Empires in the Sun: The Rise of the New American West. Woodland Hills, Calif.: Windsor, 1982.

McCormick, John S. Salt Lake City, the Gathering Place: An Illustrated History. New York: Putnam, 1980.

Dean L. May

See also Latter-day Saints, Church of Jesus Christ of ; Tabernacle, Mormon ; Utah ; Westward Migration and vol. 9: An Expedition to the Valley of the Great Salt Lake of Utah .