Salt Lake County, UT

Settlement & growth (pre-1960)

Before Euro-American settlement, the Salt Lake Valley was inhabited by bands of the Western Shoshone, Goshute, and Ute peoples, who seasonally camped along the Jordan River and the shores of the Great Salt Lake. Spanish explorers passing through in 1776 left no permanent settlements, and the region remained sparsely populated until Anglo-American arrival.

The first lasting settlement occurred in July 1847, when Mormon pioneers under Brigham Young entered the valley and founded Salt Lake City. Within days they were plowing fields and digging irrigation ditches along City Creek. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints directed a systematic colonization effort over the following decades, sending church members to satellite settlements throughout the valley. By the 1850s and 1860s, tens of thousands of European converts — primarily English, Welsh, Scandinavians (Danish, Swedish, Norwegian), and Scots — immigrated to the territory and were directed to specific communities. English and Scandinavian converts dominated the early farming settlements of Sandy and West Jordan, while Welsh and Scottish immigrants concentrated in Murray and Midvale, where the smelters and rail yards offered industrial work.

Following the transcontinental railroad's completion in 1869, a wave of non-Mormon immigrants arrived for mining and railroad work. Greeks, Italians, Slavs (chiefly Croatians and Slovenians), and Chinese laborers poured into the region, establishing enclaves in the mining camps of Bingham Canyon (part of unincorporated Salt Lake County) and in the industrial districts of Murray and Midvale. These groups remained largely segregated from the LDS pioneer core, building their own churches, fr