The Starving Time and Beyond

The first years in new Zion were a bitter trial.  Too few crops were harvested and too few houses were built for the 3600 followers who arrived during 1847-48.  The winter of 1848 became known as "the Starving Time".  Mormons shivered in rude huts and tents, eating "glue soup", a concoction of boiled ox hide in water.  Spring brought renewed efforts only to see those crops destroyed by insects again.  Food in the coming winter was not enough. 

Meanwhile, Congress rejected Young's plan for the State of Deseret in 1850.  They instead created the state of Utah and Young was appointed territorial governor.  On top of that, thousands of Gentiles came through Mormon territory on their way to California in 1848.  Mormons did trade food and livestock for tools, manufactured goods and desperately needed cash, thus creating an economic boom.  Mormons took blatant advantage of Gentiles though, charging as much as $20 a hundred weight of flour,  $200 for a mule. 

Back in Washington, new reactions against the Mormon's theocracy, economic practices, and tight control of the Utah territory were being filtered back from the West.  By 1857 a war was mounting against them again.  Brigham Young was relieved of his governorship that year and a Gentile was appointed in his place.  President Buchanan dispatched 2500 federal troops to Utah when Young vowed to fight. Eventually Young accepted the change, but departed Salt Lake City after a symbolic march and camped 44 miles southwest of the city. 

By 1860 more than 40,000 people lived in Utah, the majority of them Mormons.  In 1870 it as recorded that over  277 canals watered over 150,000 acres, making the desert bloom.  A visitor wrote "community of order, peacefulness and industry where every person from the humblest believer to the Bishop is engaged in manual labor, the colony is flourishing and progressive. "

Brigham Young's vision had become a reality - at least in part.

Next time...Massacre at Mountain Meadows
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On this Day in Pioneer History:  On June 22, 1775, the Congress issues Continental Currency in the amount of $2 million bills of sale.