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Salt Lake Valley (1848-1870)

Brian Q. Cannon

By 1870, twenty-three years after the first Mormon settlers had arrived, Salt Lake County's population had soared to more than 18,000. Of that number nearly 13,000 resided in Salt Lake City, while 700 lived in nearby mining camps and over 4,000 inhabited farming districts in the valley.

The city itself had spread far beyond the original plat surveyed in 1847. Plat B, consisting of 63 blocks to the east of the original city, and Plat C, comprising 84 blocks to the west, had been added in 1848 and 1849, respectively. In the latter part of the 1850s, additional two-and-one-half- acre blocks had been surveyed north of South Temple Street between Third and Tenth East in the area that is today known as the Avenues. In the 1860s, additional blocks were added between Tenth and Fourteenth East. Fifty blocks were also surveyed north of Plats C and A.

By 1870, homes, farms, and villages dotted the valley beyond the city limits. Settlement of outlying farms had commenced in earnest as early as 1848, when groups of farmers had established the communities of Sugarhouse, four miles southeast of the city; East Millcreek, seven miles southeast of Salt Lake City; and Spring Creek (Holladay), nine miles southeast of the city, along Big Cottonwood Creek. In that same year, members of Amasa Lyman's pioneer company had taken up land between Big and Little Cottonwood creeks and named their settlement South Cottonwood. Other Mormons had located southwest of the city along the Jordan River at West Jordan and North Jordan (Taylorsville). In 1849, farmers established the nuclei for five other farm villages: Brighton and English Fort (Granger) along the Jordan River, Fort Union (also called Union; originally part of South Cottonwood), Butterfield (Herriman) along Butterfield Creek, 22 miles southwest of Salt Lake City, and Willow Creek (Draper), in the extreme southeastern corner of the valley. Throughout the 1850s, settlers filled in additional lands along the Jordan River, taking up farms in East Jordan (Midvale) as early as 1851 and at South Jordan in 1859.

Not only residential districts and farms but a variety of industrial enterprises and businesses were established in the valley between 1847 and 1870. Within ten years of the first settlers' arrival in the valley, over two dozen mills were operating in the valley and surrounding canyons. In 1870, businesses were concentrated in the district between West Temple and 200 East and between South Temple and 300 South. Main Street was particularly crowded with businesses, including a bakery, a furniture store, blacksmith shops, a millinery, a telegraph office, a barbershop, and dry goods and grocery stores.