Page:History of Utah.djvu/373



CHAPTER XIV.

EDUCATION, MANUFACTURES, COMMERCE, AGRICULTURE, SOCIETY.

1850-1852.

BOUSDAKIES AND EXTENT OF UtAH— CONFIGURATION AND PHYSICAL FeAT-

tnuEs OF THE Country — Its Lands and Waters-^Iora and Fauna — State University — Curriculum— Educational Ideas — Library — Periodicals — Tabernacle and Temple — New Fort — Progress of the Useful Arts — Mills, Factories, and Manufactures— Farm Prodccts — Traffic— Population — Revenue — Mortality — Healthful Aies and Medicinal Springs.

In the year 1850 Utah, bounded on the south and east by New Mexico, Kansas, and Nebraska, on the west by CaHfornia, on the north by Oregon, which then included Idaho, was one of the largest territories in the United States. Its length from east to west was 650 miles, its breadth 350 miles, and its area 145,- 000,000 acres. The portion known as the great basin, beyond which were no settlements in 1852, has an elevation of 4,000 to 5,000 feet, and is sur- rounded and intersected by mountain ranges, the high- est peaks of the Humboldt Range near its centre be- ing more than 5,000 feet, and of the Wasatch on the east about 7,000 feet, above the level of the basin.

For 300 miles along the western base of the Wasatch Range is a narrow strip of alluvial land.* Elsewhere in the valley the soil is not for the most part fertile until water is conducted to it, and some of the alkali washed out. Rain seldom falls in spring


 * Gunnison's The Mormons, 15.

Hist. Utah