Deserets, Red Stockings, and Out-of-Towners: Baseball Comes of Age in Salt Lake City, 1877-79 BY KENNETH L. CANNON II
Salt Lake City, late 1870s. Washington Square, where baseball was played, was then on the edge of town, four blocks south of the Gardo House in distant right of center of this C. R. Savage photograph, USHS collections.
1 HE LAST THREE YEARS OF THE 1870s witnessed a flowering of baseball in Salt Lake City with the first professional players in the city, the largest crowds to view local games in the nineteenth century, and controversy over the game that increased through the period. Baseball was the center of summer conversation for many Salt Lakers, and nearly everyone knew about the two best local clubs, the Deserets and Red Stockings. Religious affiliations increased local interest. T h e number of spectators attending games sometimes equalled 25 percent of the city's population, and more teams were fielded than ever before. These years and the two principal clubs Mr. Cannon is an attorney in Salt Lake City and a member of the Advisory Board of Editors of Utah Historical Quarterly.
