Lesser known facts about Utah’s early history

            This is the Place Mormon Pioneer Monument at the mouth of Emigration Canyon.

Here are some obscure facts about Utah’s early history:

-First wheeled vehicle: In 1827, a four-pounded cannon was fired at a rendezvous at Bear Lake. This is also believed to be the first wheeled vehicle to cross the Rocky Mountains.

-In 1846, a McBride family left Soda Springs, Idaho and went south to the Salt Lake Valley. They were not impressed. One of the men wrote in his diary at a warm springs in the future SLC, “Hell is not one mile from this place.”

-The Hastings party in 1846 came down Weber Canyon into the S.L. Valley. They had so much trouble getting through Devil’s Gate, near the mouth of the canyon, that they left a note for the Reed and Donner party not to go that way, but down East Canyon and Emigration Canyon instead. That group took 21 days to traverse that area – only 36 miles long.

-Here’s a full count of the original, vanguard 1847 Mormon Pioneer group that first entered the S.L. Valley: 143 men, 3 women, 2 children, 73 wagons – including one boat and one mounted cannon; 93 horses; 52 mules; 19 cows; 17 dogs; and some chickens.

-Peg Leg Smith, who had a trading post in the Bear Lake Valley, offered the Mormons that he would lead them there for colonization. He met them in Wyoming.

-No one “bought land” in the S.L. Valley or the Mormon Pioneer colonized areas – Land distribution was usually done by drawing lots. “No man should buy or sell land,” Brigham Young said. “Every man should have his land measured off to him for city and farming purposes, what he could till. He might till it as he pleased but he be must be industrious and take care of it.”

-The limited number of Indian war and confrontations with the Mormon Pioneers is considered remarkable, given that they rarely did treaties.

-One of the lesser-known provisions made after making the Manifesto, anti-polygamy declaration in 1890, was that LDS President Wilford Woodruff ordered the endowment house razed to the ground.

SOURCE: “Outline History of Utah and The Mormons,” by Gustive O. Larson, Deseret Book, 1961.