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Expansion Outside the Wasatch Front

Lynn A. Rosenvall

Mormon exploration teams reconnoitered the Great Basin seeking potential farmland, water, timber, grazing lands, and other resources. Brigham Young "intended to have every hole and corner from the Bay of San Francisco to the Hudson Bay known to us [the Mormons]." Settlement sites were required for those fleeing from Missouri and Illinois and also for the thousands of anticipated converts from Europe and elsewhere. Total Numbers of migrants to the Salt Lake Valley eventually exceeded 100,000. The new settlements were generally nucleated farm villages where each family lived within the village and traveled daily to and from their farmland in the surrounding area. Mormon settlement history can be divided into three periods. (1) From 1847 to 1857, contiguous growth centered on Salt Lake City, with a few outlying settlements at strategic points on the periphery. The coming of a federal army to Utah in 1857 ended this era. (2) From 1858 to 1869, colonization was wholly within the borders of the territory of Utah. This period ended with the completion of the railroad. (3) From 1870 to 1900, there was expansion into territory outside of Utah.

1847 to 1857

All of the settlements founded in the first two years, except Ogden, were located within the Great Salt Lake valley. In 1849, major settlements, such as Provo, Manti, and Tooele, became hub communities around which were located secondary villages. In this first decade the Mormons established some 100 settlements located mainly along the Wasatch Mountain Range in a discontinuous strip starting at Bear River valley in southeastern Idaho, then stretching south through Salt Lake, Utah, Juab, Pavant, and Beaver valleys and finally terminating in the Virgin River valley some 300 miles south of Salt Lake City. At strategic points on the periphery, settlements were built as way stations for moving goods and personnel into the region. Genoa (1849) and Frankton (1856) in the Carson valley were established on the west, and Fort Supply (1853) and Fort Bridger (1855), previously built as a trading post, were founded at the eastern entrance into Utah. In 1851, a Mexican ranch in Southern California was acquired as the settlement site for San Bernardino. Key settlements such as Parowan (1851) and Las Vegas (1855) were located along the Mormon Corridor route from San Bernardino to Salt Lake City. The desire to proselyte the Indians prompted the founding of Fort Limhi (1855) in the Salmon River country of Idaho and the Elk Mountain settlement (1855) on the upper Colorado River. In 1857, Mormon leaders, as a defensive response to the approaching army of Albert Sidney Johnston, recalled all of the settlers in these outlying communities.

1858 to 1869