Everything about Utah Territory totally explained
The
Territory of Utah was an
organized territory of the
United States of America that existed from its organic act on
1850-09-09, until the admission of the
State of Utah to the
Union on
1896-01-04.
The territory was organized by an organic act of
Congress in
1850, on the same day that the
State of California was admitted to the Union. The creation of the territory was part of the
Compromise of 1850 that sought to preserve the balance of power between slave and free states. With the exception of a small area around the headwaters of the
Colorado River in present-day
Colorado which had been acquired from
Spain with the
Adams-Onís Treaty of
1819, the
United States had acquired all the land of the territory from
Mexico with the
Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo of
1848.
The creation of the Utah Territory was partially the result of the petition sent by the
Mormon pioneers who had settled in the
valley of the Great Salt Lake starting in
1847. The Mormons, under the leadership of
Brigham Young, had petitioned Congress for entry into the Union as the
State of Deseret, with its capital as
Salt Lake City and with proposed borders that encompassed the entire
Great Basin and the watershed of the
Colorado River, including all or part of nine current U.S. states. The Mormon settlers had drafted a state constitution in
1849 and Deseret had become the
de facto government in the Great Basin by the time of the creation of the Utah Territory.
Following the organization of the territory, Young was inaugurated as its first governor on
February 9,
1851. In the first session of the territorial legislature in October, the legislature adopted all the laws and ordinances previously enacted by the General Assembly of the State of Deseret.
Mormon governance in the territory was regarded as controversial by much of the rest of the nation, partly fed by continuing lurid newspaper depictions of the
polygamy practiced by the settlers, which itself had been part of the cause of their flight across the country to the
Great Salt Lake basin after early attempts to found settlements farther east.
Although the Mormons were the majority in the Great Salt Lake basin, the western area of the territory began to attract many non-Mormon settlers. In
1861, partly as a result of this, the
Nevada Territory was created out of the western part of the territory. In the same year, a large portion the eastern area of the territory was reorganized as part of the newly created
Colorado Territory.
The arrival of the railroad, simultaneously from California and the east in
1869, wasn't regarded as especially beneficial by the Mormons who governed the territory. The ceremony of the driving of the
golden spike at
Promontory Summit to complete the
transcontinental railroad was boycotted by the territory officials, who were wary of the encroachment of the outside world into the basin of the Great Salt Lake.
The controversies stirred by the Mormon religion's dominance of the territory is regarded as the primary reason behind the long delay of 46 years between the organization of the territory and its admission to the Union in
1896 as the
State of Utah, long after the admission of territories created after it. In contrast, the Nevada Territory, although more sparsely populated, was admitted to the Union in
1864, only three years after its formation, largely as a consequence of the Union's desire to consolidate its hold on the silver mines in the territory. Colorado was admitted in
1876.
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