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Salt Lake City (1847)
Brian Q. Cannon
On Wednesday, July 21, 1847, Orson Pratt and Erastus Snow ascended Donner Hill and caught their first good view of the Salt Lake Valley. They "could not refrain from a shout of joy," Pratt recorded. Later that day, they briefly explored the valley before rejoining their company's wagon train in Emigration Canyon. On the following day, the first Mormon wagons lumbered into the valley. From the mouth of Emigration Canyon the pioneer company moved in a southwesterly direction, passing near the site of present-day Westminster College, and then turned almost due west. Oxen and wagons beat a path through thick stands of grass over six feet high. Thomas Bullock compared walking through the grass to "wading." When the wagons arrived at the north bank of Parley's Creek, near today's Fifth East between Sixteenth and Seventeenth South, they decided to stop: the site was, in Bullock's words, "bare enough for a camping ground, the grass being only knee deep, but very thick." Nine horsemen led by Orson Pratt devoted the remainder of the day to exploring the northern portion of the valley, and at length determined that the most promising site for farming lay along City Creek, two miles directly north of their temporary encampment.
Accordingly, on the following day the travelers relocated along the south bank of City Creek, between today's Third and Fourth South streets and Main and State streets. That evening Pratt designated the valley as sacred ground in a dedicatory prayer. Brigham Young and his fellow travelers entered the valley on July 24 and proceeded to the pioneer encampment.
Although they had decided to plant crops along City Creek, the pioneers continued to investigate other possible sites for a final encampment. On July 27 they met to discuss the subject. William Vance moved that the group send an expedition to the western shores of the Great Salt Lake before selecting the site for a settlement, but his suggestion inspired little enthusiasm among the other settlers. After some deliberation they opted to remain along City Creek.
Having selected the site for their settlement, the leaders began to make plans for distributing land to each household. Brigham Young indicated that "every man should have his land measured off to him for city and farming purposes, what he could till." Toward that end, Orson Pratt began a survey of the valley. Pratt's original rectangular plat, designated in subsequent years as Plat A, consisted of 135 blocks, although 22 of the blocks in the vicinity of Capitol Hill and City Creek Canyon were not divided into city lots as part of the survey. Plat A extended from Ninth South to Fifth North streets and from Fifth West to Third East streets. The survey provided for three public squares of ten acres each--the sites of Washington Square, Pioneer Park, and West High School today. The temple block, originally envisioned as a 40-acre tract, was reduced to a single ten-acre block. Aside from these public squares, city blocks consisted of eight lots of one and one-quarter acres each and were bounded by streets eight rods wide. Homes were to be built in the center of each lot and were to be set back 20 feet from the sidewalks.