Utah

“ This afternoon the Utah mountains and valleys seem to belong to our own very world again. They are covered with common sunshine. Down here on the banks of the Jordan, larks and redwings are swinging on the rushes; the balmy air is instinct with immortal life; the wild flowers, the grass, and the farmers' grain are fresh as if, like the snow, they had come out of heaven, and the last of the angel clouds are fleeing from the mountains. ”

“ We find ourselves a very cosmopolitan community in Utah, gathered from all parts of the world, of all sects and persuasions in religion, of all parties in politics, engaged in all of the common avocations of life, from cultivating the soil to delving in the bowels of the earth for its precious ores, its coals and its oils. ”

“ Here in this State the pioneers and those who came after them took not the land that would ordinarily be chosen as land that would yield return with little effort. You took territory which at the outset was called after the desert, and you literally—not figuratively—you literally made the wilderness blossom as the rose. The fundamental element in building up Utah has been the work of the citizens of Utah. ”

“ No division of the United States has a better credit in commercial circles than Utah, and this is not due to the peculiar institution of polygamy, but to the perfect system of irrigation. The careful husbanding of the waters that come down the Wahsatch Range on mountains, has transmuted a dreary desert of sand and sage brush into what most travellers regard as a garden, and what possibly to the faithful appears symbolically a Paradise. ”

“ The Mormon hegira planted the first of the island settlements in the heart of the desert. The very isolation of Utah gave it prominence. What religious enthusiasm lacked in aiding organization, shrewd leadership and resulting prosperity supplied. The first impulse moving population across the plains had been chiefly conquest, with Oregon as the result. Religion was the next, producing Utah. The lust for gold followed close upon the second, calling into life California, and then in a later decade sprinkling little camps over all the mountain West. ”

“ The capital of Utah, so well chosen for its special purpose, was an unbroken wilderness forty years ago, but can now boast a population of twenty-five thousand. Under the hands of its present occupants, the whole surrounding valley has been cultivated to a degree of fertility scarcely equaled by the same number of square miles on the continent. The city proper is laid out in broad streets intersecting each other at right angles, and which are bordered with cottonwood trees, forming a pleasant shade ”

“ The principal value of Utah Territory is its position as a great half-way station—a Tadmor in the wilderness—between the Valley of the Mississippi and the Western States, California and Oregon; it has thus proved a benefit to humanity. ”

“ Utah has been made chiefly famous through the Mormons, who emigrated thither before the discovery of gold in California. Its size is about double that of the State of New York, and its chief resources are mineral and agricultural. It forms a part of the Mexican cession of 1848, and its name is derived from the Ute or Utah Indians. Salt Lake City was founded, and Utah asked for admission into the Union in 1849, but was refused. A territorial government was organized in 1860, with Brigham Young as governor. ”

“ Utah Territory is pronounced by immigrants from the Old Country to be a "mean land," hard, dry, and fit only for the steady, sober, and hard-working Mormon. Scarcely one fiftieth part is fit for tillage; farming must be confined to rare spots, in which, however, an exceptional fertility appears. ”

“ While southern Utah was thus growing, a new movement was developed. In 1879, the Mormon Church leaders called for eighty men from the Southern Mission to establish an outpost for the purpose of “cultivating and maintaining friendly relations with Indians whose homes were near the point where the state of Colorado and the Territories of Utah, New Mexico and Arizona come together.” ”

“ They brag constantly, and largely, about Great Salt Lake City, and surely they have a right to. In the essential points of beauty, comfort, cleanliness, and good order, it has few equals, and perhaps no superiors of its age and size anywhere, and all things considered is indeed a perfect miracle for Utah. In the very heart of the great internal basin of the continent, and the centre of a busy and thriving people, it really seemed to be a natural metropolis there, and was everywhere talked of as the future workshop and mart of that region. ”

“ Utah's population is now about the size of that of Montana, and but slightly more native in character (three-fifths) . These natives are to a large extent born in the State, the descendants of the Mormon pioneers. The "Gentiles" are of widely scattered origin. The foreign stock is mostly English or Scandinavian, the Mormon missionaries having worked diligently in those kingdoms. Utah, therefore, represents a Nordic population, and one with a high birthrate, whence it is evidently destined to continue spreading steadily in the Great Basin. ”

“ Some seventeen years ago a small band of Mormons—headed by Brigham Young—commenced in the present thrifty metropolis of Utah. The population of the territory of Utah is over 100,000—chiefly Mormons—and they are increasing at the rate of from five to ten thousand annually. The converts to Mormonism now are almost exclusively confined to English and Germans—Wales and Cornwall have contributed largely to the population of Utah during the last few years. The population of Great Salt Lake City is 20,000.—The streets are eight rods wide—and are neither flagged nor paved. ”

“ The Governor smiled as he explained distances and details with the growing enthusiasm which ever belonged to even temporary ownership in Utah scenery.
"This is the most wonderful place in the world. The eye is not weary, the brain is not taxed, nor the body aged, by life in this salubrious climate. ”

“ Utah is the heart of the arid region of North America; her soils are heavy with wealth of plant food. If the time comes that her valleys be filled with people, crowding in from the nations of the earth, her soils, responding to the better treatment which science is developing day by day, will display their strength, and feed the world, should the demand be made. ”

“ It is impossible to write flippantly with all the world for critics.
Now, the demeanour of women in Utah, as compared with say Brighton or Washington, is modesty itself, and the children are just such healthy, pretty, vigorous children as one sees in the country, or by the seaside in England—and, in my opinion, nowhere else. Utah-born girls, the offspring of plural wives, have figures that would make Paris envious, and they carry themselves with almost Oriental dignity. But remember, Salt Lake City is a city of rustics. ”

“ Since the settlement of Utah grew immediately out of the persecution of the Mormons, and since their persecutions grew out of the doctrines which they promulgated, it seems to me essential that the origin and nature of their religion should be given. And as they are supposed to know better than others what they believe and how they came so to believe, I shall let them tell their own story of the rise and progress of their religion, carrying along with it the commentaries ries of their opponents ”

“ Colonies and proselytes were brought in from various parts of the world, until two hundred thousand Mormons came to Utah, and after protracted conflicts with the Government, polygamy was declared illegal, and its discontinuance was ordered by proclamation of the Mormon President. Twelve miles from the Great Salt Lake is the Utah capital and Mormon Zion, Salt Lake City, where the Latter-Day Saints and Gentiles together exceed fifty thousand. Its prosperity is largely due to the extensive mining interests of the surrounding country. ”

“ Nevada, moreover, lies under the disadvantage of having on one side of it the finest portion of California, on the other the finest portion of Utah, and sandwiched between two such Beauties, such a Beast naturally looks its worst. For the northern angle of Utah is by far the most fertile part of the territory, possessing, in patches, some incomparable meadows, and corn-lands of wondrous fertility. As compared with the prodigious agricultural and pastoral wealth of such states as Missouri, Illinois, or Ohio, the Cache Valleys and Bear Valleys of Utah seem of course insignificant enough ”

“ Physical Features.—The eastern portion of Utah consists of high plateaus, and constitutes a part of the Colorado Plateau province. The remaining western portion of the state is lower, belongs in the Great Basin province, and is characterized by north-south mountain ranges separated by desert basins. The high plateaus consist of great blocks of the earth's crust which are separated from each other by fault-lines, and which have been uplifted to different heights. ”

“ Not alone in Utah do the Latter-day Saints find a home. Their hundreds of settlements bedeck the mountain valleys from the province of Alberta, in Canada, through Montana, Oregon, Idaho, Nevada, Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico, in the United States, to Chihuahua, in Old Mexico, on either side of a line which reaches fifteen hundred miles along the backbone of the American continent. ”

“ The mountains are artistically placed, the streams made to run with remarkable regularity and directness, and they are placed in positions affording the best facilities for commerce. The lakes and rivers Timpanogos, Salado, and Buenaventura, by their position, not to say existence, show the hopeless confusion of the author's mind.
A brief glance at the later visits of white men to Utah is all that is necessary in this place. ”

“ The total of members in the whole European mission is not less than 40,000. I subjoin a list of the various places—kindly furnished to me by an influential Saint—which the Mormons have selected for worship in London. [2]
Two points in this subject are truly remarkable. The first is the difference between Utah Territory and all other Anglo-Scandinavian colonies, in which males are usually far more numerous than females. The latter, at Utah, by the census of 1856, are 1781 in excess of the former; almost as great a disproportion as the extra three quarters of a million in England. ”

“ You can now understand, my children, why you were born in Utah, and not in either Missouri or Illinois. If they had let us alone we would have made those lands an Eden, and we would have molested or hurt no one. For there are no people that preserve the laws of our government as well as the Latter-day Saints. ”

“ Herein Utah sets an example in this arid region to the rest of the world, and the future history of this great interior country will award all due honor to the wise legislation of Utah, and the wise counsels of her leaders, and deprecate the folly of the surrounding States and Territories in not following their example in this respect. But the Lord has blessed the labors of the people of Utah in diverting the mountain streams over the arid plains, and opening farms, orchards and vineyards, and building villages, towns and cities, organizing governments, and establishing a commonwealth. ”

“ I saw something of the social life of Utah as well as the wonderful country through which I passed, and was favorably impressed with the material development of the latter, as witnessed in its farms and mechanical industries. The men I conversed with were fairly intelligent—some exceptionally so; and hesitated not to explain and justify their peculiar faith and domestic life. They are certainly neither monsters nor murderers, but men possessing good manners and many of them refined tastes. In short, I found much good human nature among this people as well as social culture. ”

“ That arbitrary line left within the Louisiana acquisition a little valley in the midst of rocky mountains, where several branches of the Grand river, one of the affluents of the Colorado, take their rise. Hero is the map. Here spreads out the vast territory of Utah, more than one hundred and eighty-seven thousand square miles. Here is the little spot, hardly a pin's point upon the map, which I cover with the tip of my little finger, which, according to the boundary fixed by the territorial bill, was cut off from the Louisiana acquisition and included in Utah. ”

“ The Ute or Utah tribe, which is composed of several bands, all acknowledging the authority of one head chief, inhabits reservations in the western part of Colorado and eastern Utah. They number about 4200. Averse to civilization, they have made little or no progress. They originally inhabited the whole mountain region of Colorado and northern New Mexico, whence they made inroads on the plains in pursuit of buffalo, and of their hereditary enemies the Sioux, the Cheyennes, and the Arapahoes. Their intercourse with the whites has been, almost without exception, characterized by friendship. ”

“ It is not only in water and verdure that Utah is naturally poor. On the mining-map of the States, the countries that lie around Utah—Nevada, Arizona, Colorado, Montana—are one blaze of yellow, and blue, and red, colored from end to end with the tints that are used to denote the existence of precious metals. Utah is blank at present—blank, the Mormons say, by nature; Gentiles say, merely through the absence of survey; and they do their best to circumvent mother nature. ”

“ Utah Territory was organized by act of Congress in the year 1850, and Young received the United States appointment of territorial governor for Utah. Large accessions of emigrants, sent forward by missionaries, rapidly increased the Mormon numbers in Salt Lake; and in the year 1853, the corner-stone of the temple at Salt Lake City was laid. ”