In 1846, a group of 148 Mormon pioneers gave up the meadows of Illinois and Missouri to go towards the West in the search of a "durable stay for the saints". This pilgrimage brought them through the vastness of the plains, where their chief Brigham Young (1801-1877), fell sick. When they arrived at the scintillating valley of the Salt Lake, Brigham Young contemplated the area from his bed and people said that he then declared: "This is the place". It was the real birth of Utah.

Thereafter thousands of other Mormons left the Eastern States to come and build their life here. They transformed the rough desert into a flourishing region and founded in 1855 the State of Utah, and Brigham Young became its first governor. When some time after the Mormons religion instituted polygamy for demographic reasons, the tension, rising up between the State of the Mormons and the Federal government, went so far - the Government brought their federal army to fight this institution. The question of polygamy delayed Utah to join the Union : in 1896, the State finally became a part of the Union.

Salt Lake City
Brigham Young decided that the Mormon Capital would be constructed in a squared area, with wide and perpendicular avenues. Until today, Salt Lake City is still considered as one of the most beautiful cities in the US.

Salt Lake City is also the headquarters of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, the Mormons. The Temple Square, centre of the mormonic life, along the principal street, shelters the Temple, the Assembly Hall and the famous Tabernacle.

The Temple of Summer was built in 40 years, with granite blocks brought from 28 miles away by the oxes.

You will be able to hear, during the religious repetitions or services, the famous Mormon Tabernacle Choir and its 375 singers, with its gigantic organ counting nearly 8,000 pipes in its construction.

The Pioneer Village Museum is comprised of 35 buildings which dated from 1847 to 1900; we can have a promenade in caravans drawn by oxes here.

Also a must to visit : the Seagull Monument : in 1848, a tribe of seagulls arrived in time to eat crickets who almost devastate the immigrants's first harvest.

In the south of Salt Lake City, Utah Copper Mine in the Bingham Canyon is the world's biggest open air copper mine.

The Great Salt Lake

The Great Salt Lake is located towards the west of Salt Lake City, situated in 1,280 meters altitude above the sea. Try to swim in the lake : you will float like a cork, due to the water density, whose salinity level is comparable to the Dead Sea's (It is, by the way, recommended to protect your eyes to avoid the salt to get in).

Bathing establishments and arranged beaches are to be find in Silver Sands and Sandpebble.

The Great Salt Lake has no output flow, although it does have some input sources constantly feeding it. One of its water sources is the Jordan River. The layer of salts and minerals concentrates by evaporation on the surface of the lake, relatively wide, located in the middle of a desert with intense sunrays. The lake scape, as well as its salinity (sodium chloride, magnesium and potassium), can undergo important variations according to the precipitations.

The Great Salt Lake ends by disappearing into the Bonneville Salt Flats, the salty swamps of Bonneville, another one of the State's particularly pompous landscapes. It is there that we find the Bonneville Race Track, a trail more than 10 miles long, formed by salt deposits. Very flat and perfectly horizontal, the track is perfectly shaped for speed car trials.

Five National Parks

Canyonlands National Park, on the Southeast of Utah near Moab, deploy its 100,000 hectares of wild territory and red rocks sculpted by erosion.

6 km north of Moab we can find Arches National Park, where you can see fantastically formed rocks, sculpted by the invisible hands of wind.

In the southwest, among the spectacular canyons and deserts, you can visit the Zion National Park, so named by the Mormons in remembrance of Sion, the "celestial city of God".

80 km to the northwest, the Bryce Canyon National Park, with its formations of eroded pink sandstone, its multicolor arrows and columns, resembles a fairytale land.

In the southern part of the State lies Capitol Reef National Park, which keeps all the earth's history printed in its rocks.