Golden Spike

    A Place Called Deseret. Before leaving the western boundaries of what was the United States in 1847 and entering Mexican territory, Brigham Young had appealed to the governors of every state and leaders of several nations for religious asylum. Few replied and none made an offer.
     Young believed that an isolated corner of the North American continent, then controlled by Mexico, would be a haven for religious freedom. Ironically, the Great Salt Lake Basin became U.S. territory only six months after the first pioneers’ arrival.
     They first petitioned for statehood in July of 1849, calling themselves the State of Deseret, a term taken from the Book of Mormon and signifying industry. The proposed boundaries ranged from central Oregon to Mexico, and from San Diego to southern Colorado, including portions of nine present-day states.

    President Fillmore Supports the Saints. United States President Millard Fillmore went part way, granting the Saints some autonomy in a smaller-than-proposed Territory of Utah (named for the Ute Indians who occupied areas of the region) and appointing Brigham Young its first governor.

Wide street in Salt Lake

To show their appreciation and respect for President Fillmore, the early Saints granted him immortality by naming the territorial capital after him. (Fillmore, now in Millard County, hosted only one session of the territorial legislature before Salt Lake City supplanted it.)

    Reflecting a city model he had learned from Joseph Smith, Brigham Young laid out city blocks of ten acres each partitioned by streets more than 130 feet wide (wide enough to allow an eight-horse carriage to turn around). Construction of houses and public facilities began immediately. At the center of it all was the site designated for construction of a house of God, or a temple. That structure would take another 46 years to complete and would become one of the most famous landmarks in western America.

    Ending the Practice of Polygamy. Yet territorial status, even with Brigham Young at the helm, was still a tenuous situation, and efforts toward statehood continued. The greatest obstacle in their way became the doctrine of polygamy, first introduced by Joseph Smith in 1843. Although this Old Testament practice of taking plural wives was practiced by a minority of early Latter-day Saints, it was officially banned by the Church in 1890. Since 1904 it has been grounds for excommunication from the Church.

Church members at boat dock

     Immigrants from Around the World. Politics aside, Brigham Young never expected it would be easy wresting a new life from the untried soil of a remote and arid frontier. Each spring and summer brought thousands of Latter-day Saint immigrants to the valley, many crossing the Great American Plains on foot, some in wagons and others coming overland from seaports in California. For several years, some immigrants even pulled their possessions and supplies in handcarts. Until the coming of the railroad, many of these early immigrants buried family members along the trail in unmarked graves. At the end of their journey, they established villages, farms, and industry for several hundred miles north and south of Salt Lake City, along the Wasatch mountain range.
     Although the first few years were lean in terms of food crops and materials, the Latter-day Saints were clearly making it work. On the day Brigham Young entered the valley in 1847, he had told his men that, given ten years without interference from any other people, the Latter-day Saints could put together a city and a build a community that would never be rooted out again.

    Buchanan’s Blunder. It was ten years to the day when messengers brought word to Brigham Young that the United States Army was advancing on Utah to quash the so-called Utah Rebellion. The entire episode could comfortably be characterized as one of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
     Three years earlier the United States Congress approved an act that would allow future incoming states and territories (there were 31 U.S. states in 1854) to choose by popular vote whether slavery would be permitted within their borders. Two years after that, a new political party, the Republican, announced its foundational opposition to the act. In attempting to illustrate what would happen should a geographic region be allowed such reckless autonomy, they pointed to Utah, where the second of the "twin relics of barbarism" (plural marriage) had been allowed to exist.
     Although they won a good deal of public sentiment with this comparison, the effort essentially backfired. The Republicans lost the election to an ardent southern democrat, James Buchanan, who immediately set about trying to extract slavery from the nation’s focus by inflaming the Utah issue. His first move was to name a replacement for Brigham Young as governor of Utah territory; and his second was to publicly contemplate sending the new governor, a Georgian named Alfred Cumming, to Utah under the protection of U.S. troops. That’s when William Drummond played right into his hands.
     Drummond, a highly unpopular federal judge in Salt Lake City who often held court with his mistress at his side, abandoned his post in March and fled to California. There he garnered headlines and editorial comment, which soon migrated to New York and Washington, claiming that the Utah Mormons were in open rebellion, confiscating and destroying court records, murdering public officials and preaching sedition from the United States. Much of this chaos, which was adamantly denied by clerks in his own court, he blamed on the ineffectual policies of the reigning Democratic administration.
     Affronted personally, Buchanan pushed his machine into high gear, and on May 28 troops and supplies began assembling at Ft. Leavenworth. The disastrous efforts of the next 13 months would become known as Buchanan’s Blunder, a military mistake that would engage one-third of the entire U.S. infantry and cost upwards of $50 million.
     Upon learning on July 24, 1857, that 2500 troops were on their way west, Brigham Young commented that he had asked for ten years of peace, and had gotten them. "Will [we] ask any odds of them? No, in the name of Israel's God, we will not; for as soon as we ask odds, we get ends of bayonets. When we have asked them for bread, they have given us stones; and when we have asked them for meat, they have given us scorpions. What is the use in asking any more?"
     Plans were made, maps were consulted, spirits were cheered. As the army moved into the high country of central Wyoming, small bands of Utah militiamen began burning supply trains, spoiling water sources and stampeding livestock. But no blood was spilled.
     The federal army suffered through a severe winter, losing more than half of their horses and stock animals by fifties at a time. The daylight temperature on the high Wyoming plains hovered just above zero for weeks. As spring returned and they attempted to enter Utah through the long, narrow depths of Echo Canyon, Utah militiamen harassed them from the heights of the canyon walls.
     Convinced that the Army had been duped and assurances from an emissary from Brigham Young that he would be received graciously, even as governor, Alfred Cumming accepted a Mormon escort into Salt Lake City in early April, leaving the army behind in their battered tents.
     When the ragged federal soldiers finally reached the town on June 26, 1858, the city was all but vacant. Only a smattering of guards could be seen with torches ready to ignite every straw-filled house, barn, store, and shop in the city. At Brigham Young’s directive, more than 30,000 Latter-day Saints had moved south 45 miles to Provo. Should the army try to take the city, everything in sight would be burning within minutes. But no rebellion was in sight.
     Humiliated publicly, Buchanan’s army was authorized to offer amnesty to the Latter-day Saints in Utah. It was a moot frivolity. Then the army continued through the deserted city where American flags waved from the windows, and set up base 40 miles to the southwest at Camp Floyd. There soldiers would remain until called back east at the outbreak of the Civil War just two years later.