The Latter Day Saint migration to Utah was one of the most unusual movement of people in US history. The combination of unique doctrines, practices and organized colonization made them a favorite subject of study even before the 1869 completion of the transcontinental railroad. Salt Lake City was the topic of many letters, articles and diaries published in the Eastern United States and in Europe. They most frequently comment on the irrigation system, theater and the Temple complex of the city. Unlike descriptions of the Mormon people, descriptions of Salt Lake City itself seem largely uninfluenced by anti-Mormon feeling.
Irrigation
The irrigation system of Salt Lake City was one of the most commented on aspects of the city. It was necessary to irrigate the entire arid region to grow anything, including the garden plots encouraged by Brigham Young and other church leaders. Jules Remy, a French social scientist who visited Utah in 1855, wrote in Journey to the Great Salt Lake that the grid streets “are watered on either side by a stream of clear water, ingeniously brought from the neighboring mountains.” This allowed gardens, orchards and farms to be located in the city, “this arrangement, besides giving a countrified aspect to the city, greatly augments its superficies; hence it is not less than three English miles in diameter.”[1] Mary Burley, an emigrant heading to California, wrote a letter to friends in 1854. “For water facilities it exceeds perhaps any thing in the world—being watered by streams of fresh water flowing from the mountain and made to run along each side of every street…”[2] Richard Ackley, a wanderer who spent several months in Utah 1858, said that “Great Salt Lake City is one of the prettiest cities I know of anywhere.”[3] This is high praise, considering that the Mormon Pioneers entered the Salt Lake Valley in 1847.
Theater
Brigham Young was a staunch supporter of the theater, and traveling actors greatly appreciated it. Artemus Ward, a famed comedian who visited Utah in 1864, commented that “they prefer comedy to tragedy.” He performed a comedic routine for the Mormons and wrote later that, “I was never listened to more attentively and kindly in my life than I was by this audience of Mormons.”[4] While at this early date, theater accommodations were somewhat limited, the Mormons made up for it with a variety of performances and actors both locally grown and traveling through.
Temple Complex
While construction of the Salt Lake Temple had only just begun, travelers to Utah agreed that the plans for the building were ambitious. Remey declared that the temple “is intended by its splendor and the magnificence of its architecture to surpass all the edifices in the world.”[5] Enrico Besana, an Italian who passed through Utah in 1868, agreed saying that “they want their new temple…to be even more luxurious than the temple of Solomon. They are using a very beautiful quality of marble.”[6]
Travelers to Utah were impressed by the order, industriousness, and ambitiousness of the Latter Day Saints from a very early time. Their reports sound like amateur anthropologists visiting a far off tribe. Their fascination with Salt Lake City and the Mormons, and their reports home, illustrate an interesting phase of LDS relations with the world.
[1] Jules Remy and Julius Brenchley, A Journey To Great Salt Lake City (London: 1861), 192-194.
[2] Mary Burell, “Council Bluffs to California, 1854” in Covered Wagon Women: Diaries & Letters from the Western Trails, 1840-1890 vol. VI ed. Kenneth L. Holmes (Glendale, California: Arthur H. Clark, 1986), 242-243.
[3] Richard Thomas Ackley, “Across the Plains in 1858” [typed manuscript] , Utah State Historical Society, 29.
[4] Artemus Ward, The Complete Works of Artemus Ward (New York: A.L. Burt Company, 1898), 288-289.
[5] Jules Remy and Julius Brenchley, A Journey To Great Salt Lake City (London: 1861), 194-195.
[6] Enrico Besana, “Enrico Besana: The New Road of Iron Will Destroy This Anomaly” in On the Way to Somewhere Else: European Sojourners in the Mormon West 1834-1930 ed. Michael W. Homer (Spokane, Washington: Arthur C. Clark Co., 2006), 121. The Salt Lake Temple is actually built out of granite, not marble.
