After an amazing time at Utah’s national parks I headed to Salt Lake City – my last stop before heading home to California.

Salt Lake City (SLC) is Utah’s largest city, with a population of over 200k. It is perhaps best known as the home of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (LDS), otherwise referred to as the Mormon Church. The LDS Church is the 4th largest US Christian denomination with 6.5M members in 2018.

Some highlights:

• Saltiest lake
• Tons of bison
• Tour of Brigham Young’s residence.

Antelope Island State Park

My first order of business was to see the Great Salt Lake so I headed to Antelope Island State Park. The park is located on Antelope Island, an island that becomes a peninsula  when the water level drops. Google promised great views and indeed I was not disappointed!

One notable thing about this park is the presence of wildlife, specifically bison (and not antelope, as one might think). Stay tuned for some exciting encounters 🙂

While Utah (and specifically SLC) has some incredible landscapes, I’m personally also fascinated by its history. Founded by the Mormons, SLC’s culture has been largely influenced by the LDS Church. Curious to learn more I did a bit of research (thanks Wikipedia), the summary of which is interspersed among the nature photos below. Hope you enjoy!

Book of Mormon

The LDS Church was founded in the 1800s in western NY by a man named Joseph Smith. By his own account Smith was one day visited by Angel Moroni who led him to a set of buried golden plates. These plates contained an engraved history of the Nephites — descendants of a prophet who migrated to North America from Jerusalem in ~600 BC. The plates were said to have been created by a prophet historian named Mormon in the 4th century.

Mormon wrote the plates in reformed Egyptian which Smith unfortunately did not know. Smith had, however, previously practiced scrying, a process by which a “seer” looked into a stone to receive divine knowledge. According to Wikipedia, there is no record of Smith finding anything in the stones despite the “readiness of some local residents to pay” for the effort.

Smith used this very technique to translate the plates into English; he published this translation in 1830 as the Book of Mormon.

It’s worth noting that no non-Mormon scholars acknowledge the existence of reformed Egyptian as a language/script. Unfortunately, additional study of the plates is impossible as, according to Smith, they were eventually returned to Moroni and are no longer in human possession.

Migrations

After writing the Book of Mormon Smith had a revelation that New Jerusalem, the city where all believers will spend eternity with Christ after the Second Coming, would be located in none other than Jackson County, Missouri. Thus began the first of a series of migrations for the Mormons. Luck was not on their side, however, as the local Missouri settlers brutally expelled them in 1833.

The Mormons next went to Illinois where the Church began to expand; it was around this time that Smith and his closest associates began to practice polygamy (more on this later). Locals grew uneasy with the growing Mormon power and the unrest worsened after Joseph Smith suppressed a newspaper containing an exposé of polygamy and theocracy. In 1844 Smith was murdered by a mob; as a result Brigham Young, Smith’s close associate, assumed leadership.

Local conflicts continued to grow until Young decided to lead the followers to the West. The group that came to be known as the Mormon Pioneers traveled across the country, first reaching Nebraska, and then Utah. As they entered the Salt Lake Valley in 1847, Young was recorded as stating, “This is the right place, drive on,” as he had claimed to have seen the area in a vision before. With no existing human settlement to cause any unrest, this marked the birth of Salt Lake City.

This Is The Place Heritage Park

After a nice day hiking and hanging out with bison I headed to This Is The Place Heritage Park to learn more about Mormon history. Unfortunately it was late afternoon and the park was closed, so instead I walked around admiring the outdoor sculptures.

Fun fact: this park is located at the spot where in 1847 Brigham Young famously said “This is right place” as he saw the Salt Lake Valley.

Polygamy

Of course no overview of Mormon history would be complete without at least a brief mention of polygamy, so I will attempt to summarize what I learned from Wikipedia.

Polygamy, or plural marriage, was practiced privately by the leaders of the LDS from the 1830s to 1852, and publicly by 20-30% of Mormon families from 1852 to 1890.

In the late 1850s tensions between Mormons and other Americans escalated due to allegations involving polygamy, and eventually even the US government got involved. In Reynolds v. United States (1878) the Supreme Court decreed it unlawful to violate anti-polygamy state laws for religious reasons. Congress legally dissolved the Church in 1887 due to the practice of polygamy, and soon after the LDS president issued a manifesto formally suspending it.

This marked an improvement in the relationship between the Mormons and the government, with Utah being admitted as a U.S. state in 1896. The Church eventually began to excommunicate polygamous members, and now actively distances itself from “fundamentalist” groups that still practice it. Today the standard LDS doctrine is monogamy.

Salt Lake City Public Library

It was nearing sunset so I looked up places to get a good view. The Public Library came up as a top spot.

Temple Square

After a beautiful sunset I wanted to see the famous LDS temple, so I headed to Temple Square. This large area contains the beautiful Salt Lake Temple as well as other church-related facilities. It was a really nice place to walk around.

Upon completion, a Mormon temple is briefly open to the public before being dedicated as the “House of the Lord” with only members allowed in. Since I’m not Mormon I was unable to enter the Salt Lake Temple, but admiring it from the outside was magnificent in its own right.

The Beehive House

While I greatly enjoyed the beautiful architecture, I wanted to learn more about Mormon culture and history from locals firsthand. Lucky for me, the Beehive House was still open.

The Beehive House is a historical landmark which served as one of Brigham Young’s official residences during his tenure as President of the LDS Church and governor of the Utah Territory. The house was built to accommodate Young’s large polygamous family.

In his lifetime Young had a grand total of 55 wives and 56 children (though by only 16 of the wives). While not all of Young’s wives were alive at the same time, nor did he live with all of them, his family was still quite large. Thus he also occupied the Lion House, another nearby residence.

I happened to be the only visitor on this quiet Thursday so I got my own private tour led by 2 nice Mormon missionaries (one of who was from Redding!). We explored the various bedrooms and offices in the building, and even addressed some serious topics. The guides asked me to read a passage from the Book of Mormon and encouraged me to explore more Mormon teachings. For their part they also answered the tough questions, informing me that polygamy was no longer practiced in the Church and that gay marriage was not officially endorsed.

Road Trip: Final Chapter

This nice history and culture lesson marked the end of my visit to Utah, and in fact the end of my road trip! My next (and final) stop was Cupertino, a nearly 800-mile drive which I did over the next 24 hours with a sleep break. After finally arriving at home on 11/10/17, I had driven a grand total of 10873 miles since leaving NYC on 9/15/17.

This marks the end of my first trip along my journey to self-discovery in 2017/2018. Thank you for following along! Stay tuned for more of Mikhail’s travel adventures 🙂