Page 212 - Curriculum Visions Dynamic Book

Utah
Salt Lake City, the capital city of Utah
Salt Lake City 1850.
Founded Incorporated Elevation Population
Metro
1847
1850
4,226 ft (1,288 m) 186,440
1,153,340 (US: 48th)
Salt Lake City, is both the capital and the largest city in Utah. It is also the largest city area in the Intermountain West.
The city is in the northeast corner of the Salt Lake Valley. The Great Salt Lake is separated from Salt Lake City by extensive marshlands and mudflats.
The Great Salt Lake is to the northwest and the Wasatch mountain ranges are to the east. The city was founded in 1847 by Brigham Young and other Mormons who saw the chance to use water from the mountain streams to irrigate what was otherwise a desert valley. Salt Lake City is still home to the headquarters of the Mormons (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter- day Saints).
For thousands of years before the arrival of Europeans, the Salt Lake area was seasonal home to Native American peoples. When Europeans arrived, the Native Americans were the Shoshone, Paiute, Goshute and Ute.
Because the Salt Lake Valley is remote and seems an unforgiving place, it was not visited
by early explorers, and the first person to reach the site that would be Salt Lake City was John Chugg in 1824. John C. Frémont and his military party surveyed the Great Salt Lake and the Salt Lake Valley in 1843 and 1845. The Donner Party of pioneers, traveled through the Great Salt Lake Valley in 1846.
On July 24, 1847 143 men, three women and two children founded Great Salt Lake City several miles to the east of the Great Salt Lake,
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Salt Lake City 1860.