History of Utah, 1540-1886 - Brigham Young University

SYSTEM OF COLONIZATION. 319
Thus we see that within less than two years after
the founding of Salt Lake City, the population there
had become larger than could be supported in comfort
on the city lots and the lands in their vicinity, and
it had been found necessary to form new settlements
toward the north and south, the latter part of the
territory being preferred, as water, pasture, and land
fit for tillage were more abundant. Instead of merely
adding suburb to suburb, all clustering around the parent
centre, as might have been done by other communities,
the church dignitaries, while yet Salt Lake
City was but a village, ordered parties of the brethren,
some of them still barely rested from their toilsome
journe} 7 across the plains, to start afresh for remote
and unprotected portions of a then unknown country.
As new locations were needed, exploring parties were
sent forth, and when a site was selected, a small company,
usually of volunteers, was placed in charge of an
elder and ordered to make ready the proposed settlement.
Care was taken that the various crafts should
be represented in due proportion, and that the expedition
should be well supplied with provisions, implements,
and live-stock.
When, for instance, at the close of 1850, it had
been resolved to form a settlement in the neighborhood
of Little Salt Lake, a notice appeared in the
Deseret Neivs of November 16th, giving the names of
those who had joined the party, and calling for a hundred
additional volunteers. They must take with them
30,000 pounds of breadstuffs, 500 bushels of seed wheat,
34 ploughs, 50 horses, 50 beef-cattle, 50 cows, and 25
pairs of holster pistols; each man must be supplied with
an axe, spade, shovel, and hoe, 46 a gun and 200 rounds
was located in 1851 by Robt Watts and nine others. Uintah, at the mouth
of Weber Canon, was settled in 1850 by Dan. Smith and a few others. It
was first called East Weber, and received its present name on the 4th of
March, 1S67, at which date the Union Pacific railroad was finished to this
point. Sloan's Utah Gazetteer, 1884, passim. Of the above settlements, those
which became prominent will be mentioned later.
46 The party must also have 17 sets of drag teeth, and of grain and grasa
scythes, sickles, and pitchforks, 50 each.