people have succeeded in accomplishing. Salt Lake
City, which was originally settled by Brigham Young and his followers in
July, 1847, is perhaps the most uniform city in the world so far as its
plans are concerned. The original settlers laid out the city in squares
ten acres large. Instead of streets sixty and eighty feet wide, as are
too common in all our crowded cities, a uniform width of 130 feet was
adopted, with more satisfactory results. In the original portion of the
city these wide streets are a permanent memorial to the forethought of
the early Mormons. The shade trees they planted are now magnificent in
their proportions, and along each side of the street there runs a stream
of water of exquisite clearness. There is very little crowding in the
way of house-building. Each house in the city is surrounded by a green
lawn, a garden and an orchard, so that poverty and squalor of the slum
type is practically unknown. The communistic idea of homes in common,
which has received so much attention of late years, was not adopted by
the founders of this city, who, however, took excellent precautions to
stamp out loafing, begging and other accompaniments of what may be
described as professional pauperism.
Within thirty years of the building of the first house in Salt Lake
City, which, by the way, is still standing, the number of inhabitants
ran up to 20,000. It is now probably more than 50,000, and the city
stands thirty-first in the order of those whose clearing-house returns
are reported and compared weekly. Hotels abound on every side, and
benevolent institutions and parks are common. Churches, of course, there
are without number, and now that the Government has interfered in the
protection of so-called Gentiles, almost all religious sects are
represented.
No description of the Mormon Temple can convey a reasonable idea of its
grandeur. Six years after the arrival of the pilgrims at Salt Lake City,
or in 1853, work was commenced on this immense structure, upon which at
least $7,000,000 have been expended. Its length is 200 feet, its width
100 feet, and its height the same. At each corner there is a tower 220
feet high. The thickness of the walls is 10 feet, and these are built of
snow-white granite. So conspicuous and massive is this building, that it
can be seen from the mountains fifty and even a hundred miles away.
The Tabernacle, which is in the same square as the Temple, and just west
of it, is aptly describe
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