Utah (English pronunciation: /ˈjuːtɑː/, «yuta») is one of the fifty states that make up the United States of America. Its capital and most populous city is Salt Lake City («Salt Lake City»).
It is located in the western region of the country, Rocky Mountains division. It borders Idaho to the north, Wyoming to the northeast, Colorado to the east, New Mexico to the southeast, Arizona to the south and Nevada to the west. With 12.57 inhabitants/km² it is the tenth least densely populated state, ahead of Nevada, Nebraska, Idaho, New Mexico, South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana, Wyoming and Alaska, the least densely populated. It was the sixth state to be admitted to the Union, on January 4, 1896, as the 45th state, ahead of Oklahoma, New Mexico, Arizona, Alaska and Hawaii.
It is famous for being the headquarters of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Utah is one of the most important transportation and telecommunications centers in the American West. Its capital is a major financial and commercial center in the American West. Manufacturing and high-tech industries are also important sources of income for the state, as are agriculture and livestock. It has a nationally renowned education and health system. The main source of income, however, is tourism. Its natural beauty attracts millions of tourists to the state every year. These attractions range from large mountain ranges conducive to skiing (in 2002, Utah hosted the Winter Olympics) and rocks that have been carved out of rock bridges by erosion, to the Great Salt Lake – the largest lake west of the Mississippi River, which is four times saltier than seawater. Much of the state has a desert appearance and climate.
The state and its history are marked by the large presence of Mormons. The term “Mormons” refers as a nickname to members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. About 60% of Utah’s population are members of this religious association, whose headquarters are in Salt Lake City. Its first members initially settled in the region of the present state of Utah in 1847, and called the region Deseret – which means “worker bee” in the language of the Book of Mormon.
In 1848, by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, the United States annexed Utah, following its victory over Mexico during the American intervention in Mexico. The U.S. Congress created the Utah Territory in 1850—naming the territory after the Ute, or «people of the mountains,» Native American tribe that lived in the region.4 On January 4, 1896, Utah became the 45th state of the United States.
Toponymy
Utah takes its name from the Spanish word yuta, the name given by the Spanish to the Ute Indians, speakers of the Shoshoni language who lived in the present-day Utah Lake Valley. This toponym is the modification of the indigenous word qusutas, with which the Franciscan priest Gerónimo de Zárate Salmerón designated this people in 1620. It probably derives from the Western Apache languages or from the Jemez people.
History:
UNTIL 1849
Amerindian tribes
Two Amerindian tribes lived in the region that constitutes the current U.S. state of Utah thousands of years before the arrival of the first European explorers. These tribes were the Anasazi and the Fremonte. These Native American tribes were subgroups of the Ute-Aztec Amerindian ethnic group, and were sedentary. The Anasazi built their homes by digging into the woods, and the Fremonte built thatched houses before disappearing from the region around the 15th century. Another Native American group, the Navajo, settled in the region around the 18th century. In the mid-18th century, other Uto-Aztecan tribes, such as the Gosiute, Paiute, Shoshone, and Ute, also settled in the region. These five groups were present when the first European explorers arrived.
Spanish Exploration and Incorporation into Mexico
The southern region of Utah was explored by the Spanish in 1540 under Francisco Vázquez de Coronado, searching for the legendary Cíbola. A group led by two New Spanish Franciscan friars—known as the Domínguez and Escalante expedition—left Santa Fe in 1776, hoping to find a route to the California coastal missions. The expedition traveled as far north as Utah Lake and encountered native residents. The Spanish explored further in the region, but were not interested in conquering the area due to its desert nature. In 1821, with the secession of the nascent Mexico from the Spanish Empire, the Utah region became part of the nascent Mexico, as part of Alta California.
Fur trappers explored parts of Utah in the early 1800s. The town of Provo was named for one such man, Étienne Provost, who visited the area in 1825. The town of Ogden was named for a member of the Hudson’s Bay Company, Peter Skene Ogden, who traded furs in the Weber Valley. In late 1824, American Jimmy Bridger became the first white person to sight the Great Salt Lake. Because of the high salinity of its waters, Bridger thought he had found the Pacific Ocean. Later, however, it was discovered that this body of water was nothing more than a gigantic salt lake. After the lake was discovered, hundreds of traders and hunters established trading posts in the region, and by the 1830s, thousands of people traveling from the East to the American West were stopping in the Great Salt Lake region.
The Arrival of the Mormons. American Intervention in Mexico
The first Americans to settle permanently in the Utah region were the Mormons. The Mormons are members of a religious group called the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. This Church had been established in 1830, near Fayette, New York, by Joseph Smith. After his assassination in 1844, Brigham Young became the leader of the majority of the Mormons. Due to the great religious persecution they suffered, the Mormons began to move from one region to another seeking freedom and religious tolerance, passing through Ohio, Illinois and Missouri. However, wherever they went there was religious persecution. In 1846, Young decided to make an expedition to the American Midwest, and look for an isolated and sparsely inhabited region where the group could enjoy religious tolerance. In 1847, Young and his expedition reached the Great Salt Lake, where they settled. A year later, in 1848, by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, the United States annexed Utah, after its victory over Mexico during the American intervention in Mexico.
Young quickly planned communities for all his followers. News of the successful settlement in the region caused thousands of people—mainly Mormons—to settle in the Great Salt Lake region and its estuaries, especially in the north of the present state, where many settled in valleys and began to irrigate these valleys, encouraging the practice of agriculture. However, the first years of settlement were difficult—especially because of a large plague of grasshoppers. However, the seagulls of the Great Salt Lake eventually exterminated the grasshoppers. Since then, the seagull has been the avian symbol of Utah, and a monument was erected in Salt Lake City in its honor.
1849 – 1896
Deseret and the Creation of Utah Territory
In 1849, Mormons created a provisional state, which they called Deseret, a massive expanse that included territory that is now Colorado, Idaho, Wyoming, Nevada, Oregon, Arizona, New Mexico, and California. In the same year, Mormons also created the Perpetual Emigration Fund Company. The fund paid for the relocation of Mormon families from other countries to Utah. This supported approximately 26,000 immigrants—about 36 percent of the estimated 73,000 Mormons who emigrated from Europe to the United States between 1852 and 1887.
Throughout 1849 and 1850, Mormons lobbied the U.S. government to elevate Deseret to statehood, but Congress rejected these requests; However, because of slavery issues in the country, the U.S. government created the much smaller Utah Territory in 1850, named for the Ute tribe that lived in the region. Although larger in area than the present state, the territory already had its current northern and southern boundaries by then. Young became the territory’s first governor.
Until the 1850s, relations between Utah’s Native Americans and Mormons were good. However, in 1853, a Ute chief, Walkara (also called Walker), began attacking Mormon communities, starting the Walker War, which raged on for a year until Young convinced Walker to stop the attacks.
The Utah War and the Mountain Meadows Massacre
Much of the U.S. Congress, as well as the president at the time, James Buchanan, wanted to remove the Mormons from the government of Utah. Rumors reached Washington that the entire territory was in revolt. President Buchanan, in 1857, decided to appoint Alfred Cumming of Georgia as the new governor of the Territory. Troops were sent to ensure compliance with the replacement, initiating the so-called Utah War (also known in English as the Utah Expedition or Buchanan’s Blunder). In the absence of any formal notification or declaration of intent, Young and other Mormon leaders interpreted the sending of troops as religious persecution and adopted a defensive posture.
In September of that same year, a group of Mormons, together with a group of Native American allies, attacked a group of about 140 people from Arkansas and Missouri who were heading toward California. The attackers assumed that these people were mostly anti-Mormons. All of the travelers were killed except for the children, who were sent to live with Mormon families (two years later, when they were claimed by their families, they returned to Arkansas). 10 This incident is known nationally as the Mountain Meadows massacre and is one of the most controversial acts committed by members of the Church. Some claim that Salt Lake officials, including Young, ordered the massacre, while others assert that Salt Lake did not learn of the massacre until it was too late.
President Buchanan had been criticized by the U.S. Congress and the public for failing to warn Young of his dismissal, provide adequate provisions for the troops, or even investigate whether it was necessary to send troops. The president wanted to end the situation, and began negotiations with Young. Young agreed to his removal and Cumming assumed the position. Although Young was no longer the governor of Utah, he was still regarded as such by the inhabitants of the territory. There were great tensions between the Mormon population and the troops who occupied Utah for three years, and who abandoned the territory in 1861 with the advent of the American Civil War.
Utah acquires its present boundaries. The 1860s.
During the 1860s, the U.S. government ceded parts of the Utah Territory to other newly created territories, including Colorado, Nevada, and Wyoming. In 1868, Utah acquired its present territorial boundaries. In 1865, the Black Hawk War began, a new conflict between the Mormons and the Native American Ute tribe, led by Chief Black Hawk. The war lasted for two years, until 1867, during which time other Native American tribes joined the Ute cause: to reconquer lands captured by the Mormons. In 1867, Black Hawk, seeing that he had no chance of victory, agreed to surrender to the U.S. government. Most of Utah’s Native Americans were then placed on Indian reservations. Occasional attacks by natives continued until 1873.
Salt Lake City became a communications center in 1860, with the start of mail transport by the Pony Express between St. Joseph, Missouri, and Sacramento, California, stopping in Salt Lake City. On October 24, 1861, two telegraph lines, one from Washington, D.C., and the other from San Francisco, were connected in Salt Lake City, inaugurating the first transcontinental telegraph line in the country.
In 1862, the United States Congress passed a law, valid for the entire country, prohibiting the practice of polygamy. The U.S. government sent a regiment of California volunteers under the command of Patrick E. Connor in Utah that year, who encouraged his soldiers to search for precious metals in the region. Connor, an anti-Mormon, hoped that such a discovery in the region would attract thousands of non-Mormons to the area, thereby reducing Mormon power in Utah. In 1863, gold and silver were discovered, although the lack of a railroad in the area made extraction of these metals very expensive. Few companies were interested in mining these reserves, and few people settled in Utah. In 1863, two railroad companies began construction of two railroads. The Central Pacific began laying a railroad line from Sacramento to the east, and the Union Pacific began construction of another railroad line from Omaha, Nebraska, to the west. On May 10, 1869, these two lines joined at Promontory, completing the first transcontinental railroad in the United States. Soon, other railroads were built in Utah, precious metal mining exploded, and Utah’s population began to grow rapidly. In 1870, Utah became the second territory in the United States to grant women the right to vote, after Wyoming, which did so in 1869. This right was repealed by Congress in 1887 with the Edmunds-Tucker Act, because it was feared that wives of polygamists would vote as their husbands ordered them to, creating a state in which, to paraphrase the well-known slogan of «one man, one vote,» it became «one man, five votes.» In 1895, women in the state regained their right to vote.
The State of Utah
As Utah’s population grew, the region began to lobby the U.S. Congress to elevate Utah to statehood. These petitions were again rejected, because of the polygamous customs of the territory (although not all Mormons actually practiced this custom, which varied between 5 and 40% of its members, depending on the time and area). During the 1880s, the US government began enforcing anti-polygamy laws in Utah, with sentences of 5 years in prison and heavy fines, and providing a mechanism for acquiring Church property. 15 All of these factors led to the official declaration in 1890 by the Church leader, Wilford Woodruff, that its members did not practice polygamy. 16 According to the Mormons, their prophet Wilford Woodruff received a revelation from God that plural marriage should be suspended.
In 1895, the territorial government of Utah created a new constitution, subject to the approval of the United States Congress. This new constitution declared the practice of polygamy illegal. In addition, it prevented the control of the government of Utah by any religious association. Under these terms, Congress ratified the new constitution, and Utah became the 45th U.S. state on January 4, 1896.
1896 – Present Day
Economic Takeoff. The Establishment of National Parks.
Utah prospered economically during the first two decades of the 20th century. The state became an important cattle center, with large herds of cattle and sheep.
The Great Depression and Economic Recovery
Utah was one of the American states hardest hit by the Great Depression of the 1930s. The drastic fall in agricultural prices and the closure of several mines resulted in Utah having one of the highest unemployment and debt rates in the country throughout the decade. Utah’s economy only began to recover after the start of World War II. With the entry of the United States into the war in 1942, Utah underwent a process of major industrialization, and the state prospered greatly. Utah became one of the largest domestic producers of ballistic missiles in the 1950s. During the decade, large deposits of uranium, oil, and natural gas were discovered in Utah. This process of industrialization continued into the 1960s, and Utah became a major steel center. In 1963, however, the demand for ballistic missiles in the country dropped dramatically, causing the state’s mineral prices to fall. Utah entered a period of economic recession that lasted until the end of the decade.
The Education Crisis of 1964
Following the end of World War II, Utah’s public education system faced a number of problems, due to the dramatic growth in school maintenance during the 1940s and 1950s, and into the early 1960s. Utah educators petitioned for a $25 million increase in education funding. The state soon agreed to increase the state education budget by $11 million, and created a committee to study the needs of the Utah school system. This committee, in 1964, recommended that the annual education budget be increased by at least $6 million, a request that was rejected by the government, which believed that this would ruin the state’s economy. However, this decision caused the National Education Association to begin a massive boycott of Utah, calling for teachers across the country to refuse to work in the state.18 With the passage of a further $25 million increase in the education budget in 1965, the union ended its protests.
Utah as a Tourism Powerhouse
Beginning in 1939 with the establishment of the Alta Ski Area, Utah has become a world-renowned skiing hotspot. During the late 1950s and 1960s, Utah’s growing urban population caused the demand for open-air recreation to grow dramatically, leading to the opening of a number of ski resorts in the state’s many mountain ranges and other open-air recreation areas by private companies and government agencies. The dry, powdery snow of the Wasatch Range is considered some of the best skiing in the world. In 1995, Salt Lake City won the bid to host the 2002 Winter Olympics, and these have served as a major economic boost. Ski resorts have increased in popularity, and many of the Olympic venues scattered across the Wasatch Front continue to be used for sporting events. This event also spurred the development of the light rail system in the Salt Lake Valley, known as TRAX, and the rebuilding of the freeway system around the city. Since then, tourism has been the state’s main source of income.
The 21st Century
In the late 20th century, the state’s population grew rapidly. According to the 2000 census, Utah was the fourth-fastest growing state (29.6%) in the United States between 1990 and 2000. St. George in the southwest was the fastest-growing metropolitan area in the United States between 2000 and 2006, and Provo-Orem was the sixth. In the 1970s, growth was enormous in the suburbs. Sandy was one of the fastest-growing cities in the country at that time. In the early 21st century, many areas of Utah are experiencing tremendous growth. Davis to the north, Salt Lake and Summit to the south and west, and Tooele, Utah, Wasatch and Washington counties are all growing very rapidly. Transportation and urbanization are major policy issues as development consumes agricultural land and uncultivated areas.