History of Utah, 1540-1886 - Brigham Young University

CHAPTER XIV.
EDUCATION, MANUFACTURES, COMMERCE, AGRICULTURE,
SOCIETY.
1850-1852.
Boundaries and Extent of Utah—Configuration and Physical Features
of the Country—Its Lands and Waters—Flora and Fauna
—State University—Curriculum—Educational Ideas—Library—
Periodicals—Tabernacle and Temple—New Fort—Progress of the
Useful Arts—Mills, Factories, and Manufactures—Farm Products
—Traffic— Population—Revenue—Mortality—Healthful Airs
and Medicinal Springs.
In the year 1850 Utah, bounded on the south and
east by New Mexico, Kansas, and Nebraska, on the
west by California, on the north by Oregon, which then
included Idaho, was one of the largest territories in
the United States. Its length from east to west was
650 miles, its breadth 350 miles, and its area 145,-
000,000 acres. The portion known as the great
basin, beyond which were no settlements in 1852,
has an elevation of 4,000 to 5,000 feet, and is surrounded
and intersected by mountain ranges, the highest
peaks of the Humboldt Range near its centre being
more than 5,000 feet, and of the Wasatch on the
east about 7,000 feet, above the level of the basin.
For 300 miles along the western base of the
Wasatch Range is a narrow strip of alluvial land. 1
Elsewhere in the valley the soil is not for the most
part fertile until water is conducted to it, and some of
the alkali washed out. Rain seldom falls in spring
1 Ounnison's The Mormons, 15.
Hist. Utah. 21 (831)