12 A GAZETTEER OF UTAH. [bull. 166. 
SETTLEMENT. 
Utah was first settled by Mormons. Driven from their homes in 
Illinois, under the leadership of Brigham Young they made their 
way across the prairies, plains, and deserts to the valley of Great Salt 
Lake, then as remote a region as could be found on earth. This 
migration numbered many thousands. Its advance guard reached the 
valley of Great Salt Lake in 1847, and was followed during that and 
the years immediately succeeding by vast numbers of saints, so that, 
in 1850, the census report showed a population of 11,380; in 1860 this 
had increased to 40,273; in 1870, to 86,786; in 1880, to 143,963, and in 
1890 it was 207,905. The growth of Utah in population has through- 
out been steady and rapid. It has, in the main, been a solid growth, 
dependent principally upon the development of its agricultural re- 
sources, and to some extent upon manufactures. Although many 
successful mines have been discovered and are in operation, the State 
has never had a great mining boom which has broken up its stable 
conditions. 
TOPOGRAPHY. 
The topography of the State is extremely varied. The eastern por- 
tion consists in the main of vast plateaus in which the streams have 
cut enormous gorges. The western portion is a part of the Great 
Basin— a region whose waters flow to neither ocean, but collect in the 
valleys and sink or are evaporated; a region of broad, detritus-filled 
valleys lying between narrow mountain ranges. These two regions 
are separated from each other by a range of high mountains, the 
Wasatch, which traverses the middle of the State in a nearly north- 
south direction. 
This range enters the State from Idaho on the north and runs south- 
ward to the mid latitude of the State. Here it loses its character as 
a range and assumes that of a series of high plateaus, which with a 
gradual descent southward extends nearly to the southern boundary. 
The range has the form of a monoclinal uplift, dipping east at a low 
angle and breaking off at the west. It therefore presents to the west 
an extremely broken, precipitious face, rising from 4,000 to 6,000 
feet above Salt Lake Valley, which it overlooks. On the east it slopes 
steeply to the valleys and gently to the high plateaus which form 
its base on that side. Its altitude ranges from 8,000 to 11,000 feet 
above the sea. Many streams head in valleys or upon the plateaus 
east of it and cut their way through the range by immense gorges to 
Salt Lake Valley. Among these are Weber, Ogden, and Provo rivers, 
Big and Little Cottonwood creeks, American Fork and Spanish Fork. 
Of these streams the larger and more powerful, which head far to the 
east of the W T asatch, probably occupied their present courses before 
