THE PATTERNS OF THE PAST BEGINNINGS
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n July 1847 Mormon pioneers descended into Salt Lake Valley to establish their city by the Great Salt Lake. Its founding stemmed from the Mormons' religious purpose to build a community free of extensive secular restraints that would hinder their plans to bring about the kingdom of God. There followed a well-planned settlement where the original pioneers and those who came afterwards could go about their business without fear of persecution. The massive migration was conceived and executed with great care and skill. The city itself was deliberately planned, with streets and buildings laid out according to a definite scheme patterned after the City of Zion plat drawn in 1833 by Joseph Smith, founder and first president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormon). The city's 10-acre blocks lay east-west and north-south to provide for wellspaced houses on lots large enough to allow for lawns, vegetable gardens, trees, and orchards. Houses were set well back from wide streets that would eventually be lined with shade trees, each street to contain an irrigation ditch in which all would have water rights. Fields, platted in a belt around the town lots, were farmed by owners who were obliged to journey to them daily. Ultimately, the unique characteristics of the city brought about an alliance among the people that fostered both religious and social institutions. In his work on Utah history, Charles S. Peterson tells of the colonizing efforts of the frontier Mormons: Responding in part to the Great Basin environment and in part to the teachings and experiences that made them a chosen people, Mormons developed their most distinctive institutions and practices in the. . .colonizing process — the call, the move, group control over land and water, and the farm village life. Developed to bring a raw en-
