page_title: Salt Lake City
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Salt Lake City / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Panoramic photo of Temple Square. The photo is taken from South Temple Street between Main and West Temple. From left to right are the Salt Lake Assembly Hall, the Salt Lake Tabernacle (the dark roofed domed structure behind the Hall), the Salt Lake Temple, and Hotel Utah is on the far right. Hotel Utah is now the Joseph Smith Memorial Building.
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: Before settlement by members of the LDS Church, the Shoshone, Ute, and Paiute had dwelt in the Salt Lake Valley for thousands of years. At the time of Salt Lake City's founding, the valley was within the territory of the Northwestern Shoshone. One local Shoshone tribe, the Western Goshute tribe, had names for the Jordan River, City Creek, and Red Butte Canyon (Pi'o-gwût, So'ho-gwût, and Mo'ni-wai-ni). The Goshutes (or, Gosiutes) also lived in the vicinity of Salt Lake and the valleys to the west. The land was treated by the United States as public domain; no aboriginal title by the Northwestern Shoshone was ever recognized by the United States or extinguished by treaty with the United States. The first American explorer in the Salt Lake area was probably Jim Bridger in 1825, although others had been in Utah earlier, some as far north as the nearby Utah Valley (the 1776 Dominguez-Escalante expedition were undoubtedly aware of Salt Lake Valley's existence). U.S. Army officer John C. Frémont surveyed the Great Salt Lake and the Salt Lake Valley in 1843 and 1845. The Donner Party, a group of ill-fated pioneers, had traveled through the Great Salt Lake Valley in August 1846.
  The settling of Salt Lake City dates to the arrival of the Latter-day Saints in July 1847. They had traveled beyond the boundaries of the United States into Mexican Territory seeking a secluded area to safely practice their religion away from the violence and the persecution they experienced in the United States. Upon arrival at the Salt Lake Valley, president of the church Brigham Young is recorded as stating, "This is the right place, drive on." Brigham Young is said to have seen the area in a vision before the wagon train's arrival. They found the broad valley empty of any human settlement.
  There was a Native American population in the valley, but an outbreak of measles during the winter of 1847 killed many.
  Four days after arriving in the Salt Lake Valley, Brigham Young designated the building site for the Salt Lake Temple. The Salt Lake Temple, constructed on the block later called Temple Square, took 40 years to complete. Construction started in 1853, and the temple was dedicated on April 6, 1893. The temple has become an icon for the city and serves as its centerpiece. The southeast corner of Temple Square is the point of reference for the Salt Lake meridian, and for all addresses in the Salt Lake Valley.
  The pioneers organized a state called State of Deseret, and petitioned for its recognition in 1849. The United States Congress rebuffed the settlers in 1850 and established the Utah Territory, vastly reducing its size, and designated Fillmore as its capital city. Great Salt Lake City replaced Fillmore as the territorial capital in 1856, and the name later was shortened to Salt Lake City. The city's population continued to swell with an influx of converts to the LDS Church and Gold Rush gold seekers, making it one of the most populous cities in the American Old West.
  The first group of settlers brought African slaves with them, making Utah the only place in the western United States to have African slavery. Three slaves, Green Flake, Hark Lay, and Oscar Crosby, came west with the first group of settlers in 1847. The settlers also began to purchase Indian slaves in the well-established Indian slave trade, as well as enslaving Indian prisoners of war. In 1850, 26 slaves were counted in Salt Lake County. In 1852, the territorial legislature passed the Act in Relation to Service and the Act for the relief of Indian Slaves and Prisoners formally legalizing slavery in the territory. Slavery was abolished in the territory during the Civil War.
  Explorer, ethnologist, and author Richard Francis Burton traveled by coach in the summer of 1860 to document life in Great Salt Lake City. He was granted unprecedented access during his three-week visit, including audiences with Brigham Young and other contemporaries of Joseph Smith. The records of his visit include sketches of early city buildings, a description of local geography and agriculture, commentary on its
caption: Panorama of Temple Square taken in 1912
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