Salt Lake City is the
capital and the most populous city of the
U.S. state of
Utah. The name of the city is often shortened to
Salt Lake or
SLC. Salt Lake City has a population of 180,651 as of 2007.
[3] The
Salt Lake City metropolitan area spans
Salt Lake,
Summit and
Tooele counties, and has a total estimated population of 1,099,973. Salt Lake City is further situated in a larger
urban area known as the
Wasatch Front and is part of the Salt Lake City-
Ogden-
Clearfield CSA that has an estimated population of 1,686,703. The total estimated population of the Wasatch Front is approximately 2,150,000.
The city was founded in 1847 as Great Salt Lake City by a group of Mormon pioneers led by their prophet, Brigham Young, who fled hostility and violence in the Midwestern United States. They extensively irrigated and cultivated the arid valley and faced persecution from the U.S. government for their practice of polygamy, which was abandoned in 1890. Today, Salt Lake City is still home to the headquarters of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS, also known as the Mormon Church). Mining booms and the construction of the first transcontinental railroad initially brought economic growth, and the city was nicknamed the Crossroads of the West. Salt Lake City has since developed a strong outdoor recreation tourist industry based primarily on skiing. Salt Lake City was host to the 2002 Winter Olympics and is the industrial banking center of the United States.[4]
Before Mormon settlement, the Shoshone, Ute, and Paiute had dwelt in the Salt Lake Valley for thousands of years. However, occupation was seasonal, near streams emptying from Canyons into the Salt Lake Valley. The first US explorer in the Salt Lake area is believed to be Jim Bridger in 1825, although others had been in Utah earlier, some as far north as the nearby Utah Valley (the Dominguez-Escalante expedition of 1776 were undoubtedly cognizant of the Salt Lake valley). U.S. Army officer John C. Frémont surveyed the Great Salt Lake and the Salt Lake Valley in 1843 and 1845.[5] The Donner party, a group of ill-fated pioneers, had traveled through the Great Salt Lake Valley in August 1846.
The first permanent settlements in the valley date to the arrival of the Latter-day Saints on July 24, 1847. They had traveled beyond the boundaries of the United States seeking an isolated area to practice their religion, away from the hostility they had faced in the East. Upon arrival, President of the Church Brigham Young is recorded as stating, "this is the right place", after seeing the area in a vision. They found the broad valley empty of any human settlement.
