page_title: Salt Lake City
section_title: Layout
hierarchical_section_title: Salt Lake City / Geography / Layout
caption_attribution_description: English: Photograph of a street map of Salt Lake City called Plat of Salt Lake City, Utah. A street map, showing the blocks and divisions of blocks in the downtown Salt Lake City area produced in the late 1860's by E. Martin, Photographer, East Temple Street, Salt Lake City, Utah Territory.
context_page_description: Salt Lake City is the capital and most populous municipality of the U.S. state of Utah, as well as the seat of Salt Lake County, the most populous county in Utah. With an estimated population of 200,567 in 2019, the city is the core of the Salt Lake City metropolitan area, which has a population of 1,222,540. Salt Lake City is further situated within a larger metropolis known as the Salt Lake City–Ogden–Provo Combined Statistical Area, a corridor of contiguous urban and suburban development stretched along a 120-mile segment of the Wasatch Front, comprising a population of 2,606,548. It is one of only two major urban areas in the Great Basin.
  Salt Lake City is the world headquarters of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The city was founded in 1847 by followers of the church, led by Brigham Young, who were seeking to escape persecution they had experienced while living farther east. The Mormon pioneers, as they would come to be known, entered an arid valley and immediately began building, planning, and extending an extensive irrigation network which could feed the population and foster future growth.
context_section_description: The city, as well as the county, is laid out on a grid plan. Most major streets run very north–south and east–west. The grid's origin is the southeast corner of Temple Square, the block containing the Salt Lake Temple; the north–south axis is Main Street; and the east–west axis is South Temple Street. Addresses are coordinates within the system (similar to latitude and longitude). Odd and even address numbering depends on the quadrant of the grid in which an address is located. The rule is: When traveling away from the grid center (Temple Square) or its axes (Main Street, South Temple Street), odd numbers will be on the left side of the street.
  The streets are relatively wide due to the direction of Brigham Young, who wanted them wide enough to permit an ox-pulled wagon team to turn around without "resorting to profanity". These wide streets and grid pattern are typical of other Mormon towns of the pioneer era throughout the West.
  Though the nomenclature may initially confuse new arrivals and visitors, most consider the grid system an aid to navigation. Some streets have names, such as State Street, which would otherwise be known as 100 East. Other streets have honorary names, such as the western portion of 300 South, named "Adam Galvez Street" (for a local Marine corporal killed in action) or others honoring Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr., César Chávez, Harvey Milk, and John Stockton. These honorary names appear only on street signs and cannot be used in postal addresses.
  In the Avenues neighborhood, north–south streets are given letters of the alphabet, and east–west streets are numbered in 2.5-acre (1.0 ha) blocks, smaller than those in the rest of the city.
  Joseph Smith, founder of the Latter Day Saint movement, planned the layout in the "Plat of the City of Zion" (intended as a template for Mormon towns wherever they might be built). In his plan, the city was to be developed into 135 10-acre (4.0 ha) lots. However, the blocks in Salt Lake City became irregular during the late 19th century when the LDS Church lost authority over growth and before the adoption of zoning ordinances in the 1920s. The original 10-acre (4.0 ha) blocks allowed for large garden plots, and many were supplied with irrigation water from ditches that ran approximately where modern curbs and gutters would be laid. The original water supply was from City Creek. Subsequent development of water resources was from successively more southern streams flowing from the mountains east of the city. Some old irrigation ditches are still visible in the eastern suburbs, or are still marked on maps, years after they were gone. There are still some canals that deliver water as required by water rights. Many lots, in Salt Lake City and surrounding areas, have irrigation water rights attached to them. Local water systems, in particular Salt Lake City Public Utilities, have a tendency to acquire or trade for these water rights. These can then be traded for culinary water rights to water imported into the valley. At its peak, irrigation in the valley comprised over one hundred distinct canal systems, many originating at the Jordan Narrows at the south end of the valley. Water and water rights were important in the 19th and early 20th centuries. As heavy agricultural usage changed into a more urban and suburban pattern, canal water companies were gradually replaced by culinary water systems.
caption: Plat of Salt Lake City, circa 1870s
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