Salt Lake City
City in the valley of the Great Salt Lake. The Latter-day Saints’ pioneer company chose its site in the summer of 1847.
The epistle that the Latter-day Saints’ Twelve Apostles issued in December 1847 describes a valley some twenty by thirty miles in extent, with the Great Salt Lake to the north-west, which their pioneer company reached in the latter part of July 1847 (General Epistle of the Twelve (1847), p. 82). There, it says, they chose the site of a city, to be called the Great Salt Lake City, surveyed it in blocks of ten acres and reserved one block for a temple (General Epistle of the Twelve (1847), p. 83). The church’s general conference met in the city in April 2020 (Latter-day Saints, Bicentennial Proclamation (2020) closing note). See Joseph Smith and the Latter-day Saints and Brigham Young.
What happened here
- 6 April 1830, firm dateJoseph Smith and the Latter-day Saints
On 6 April 1830, the year the Book of Mormon is printed, Joseph Smith and five others organize a church in western New York. Its leaders declare it to be Christ’s church restored. The Catholic Church and some other churches do not accept its baptism.