The New Student's Reference Work/Salt Lake City

Salt Lake City, capital of Utah, is on Jordan River, twelve miles from Great Salt Lake and 4,265 feet above the sea. It covers twelve square miles. Its streets are 132 feet wide, shaded by fine trees, many of them freshened by streams of running water from the neighboring mountains, and lighted by electricity. The finest public buildings are the Mormon temple, which cost $4,000,000, with walls built of dressed granite, twenty feet thick at the bottom, tapering to six feet at the top; the tabernacle, a huge building in the shape of an ellipse, with a dome-shaped roof resting on sandstone pillars, and seating 7,000; and the city and county building. Though Mormon influence is strong, there are Roman Catholic, Episcopalian, Presbyterian, Congregational and Methodist churches. St. Mark's cathedral (Episcopalian), the cathedral (Roman Catholic) and the First Presbyterian Church are the finest Gentile churches. The city is the center of large mining-industries, and has smelting-works, flour and paper mills, foundries, machine-shops, breweries and tanneries. It has good free public schools, supported at an annual cost of $500,000, and an enrollment of 15,500. Here is the University of Utah, a coeducational institution supported by the state, having 53 instructors and 957 students, including the preparatory department. There also are denominational schools. Salt Lake City was founded in 1847 by Brigham Young who, with a company of Mormon pioneers, left Council Bluffs in the spring to find a site for the future Mormon capital. For years the growth of the city depended upon the inflow of Mormon immigrants, but later the mines in its vicinity attracted Gentiles or non-Mormons. The population of the city is 92,777.