Salt Lake City

Salt Lake City is the capital of Utah, United States, in a valley between the Wasatch Range and the Great Salt Lake. It holds the world headquarters of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Brigham Young led the first company of Mormon pioneers into the valley in 1847, and the city was laid out on a grid around the block of the temple, with streets wide enough for a wagon team to turn. Addresses still count from Temple Square, where the granite Salt Lake Temple took four decades to build and was dedicated in the 1890s. The railroad reached the city soon after the lines met at Promontory to the north, and mining and smelting in the canyons brought new settlers. In 2002 Salt Lake City held the Winter Olympics.

Deseret Book, owned by the church, publishes and sells religious books and music from the city. Black Diamond Equipment designs climbing gear and ski equipment at its head office near the Wasatch foothills. Copper from the Bingham Canyon Mine in the Oquirrh Mountains to the southwest is smelted and refined in the valley.

The Tabernacle on Temple Square, with its domed roof and pipe organ, is the home of the Tabernacle Choir. The Utah State Capitol, built of granite with a copper dome, stands on Capitol Hill above the city. This Is the Place Heritage Park marks the spot where Brigham Young is said to have looked over the valley and declared it the right place. Red Butte Garden, run by the University of Utah, grows plants of the Intermountain West on the foothills.