Utah

A theocratic settlement that took nearly fifty years to be admitted, on terms it had to change its religion to meet. Mormon pioneers reached the Salt Lake valley in 1847 on land still nominally Mexican, having been driven out of Ohio, Missouri and Illinois; the provisional State of Deseret they organised claimed a vast area and was refused, and Congress created Utah Territory in 1850 instead. Brigham Young governed as both territorial governor and church president, and the settlement system he directed founded hundreds of irrigated towns across the Great Basin, an achievement in desert agriculture with few parallels. Federal conflict over theocratic rule and plural marriage produced the Utah War of 1857, the Mountain Meadows massacre of a passing wagon train that September, and escalating anti-polygamy legislation that eventually disincorporated the church and seized its property. The 1890 Manifesto renouncing plural marriage cleared the way, and statehood came in 1896 with polygamy banned by the state constitution. The Transcontinental Railroad was joined at Promontory Summit in 1869. The church's genealogical archive is the largest in the world. Utah has the youngest population and the highest birth rate of any state. Salt Lake City is the capital and hosted the Winter Olympics in 2002. The Great Salt Lake is the largest saltwater lake in the western hemisphere and is shrinking. Five national parks lie in the state's red rock south. About two-thirds of residents are members of the church. Bonneville's salt flats have hosted land speed records since 1912. The state's grid of numbered streets radiating from temple squares was laid out on Young's plan.

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