Tooele—What Is the Name's Origin? BY G E O R G E T R I P P
27, 1847, JUST THREE DAYS AFTER THE ARRIVAL of the main body of Mormon pioneers into the vakey of the Great Salt Lake, Brigham Young and sixteen other men crossed the Jordan River and fokowed the California immigrant trak west to the south end of the Great Salt Lake. The purpose of the trip was to examine and evaluate the soil, water, timber, and other natural resources of their new home.^ After bathing in the lake they continued westward into the north end of the Tooele Valley.^ The Mormons are credited with naming Tooele, but ever since the christening people have wondered where the name came from. Capt. Howard Stansbury of the U.S. Topographical Engineers, who surveyed the valley of the Great Salt Lake (1849-50), reported, "this valley is called 'Tuika Valley' by the Mormons."^ The name was originally spelled Tuilla, but for some unknown reason it was later changed to Tooele. Where the name Tooele came from has been a fascinating mystery ever since pioneer days. Several versions of how Tooele was named have been in circulation for a long time. Some of them are so farfetched that the only logical explanation for them has to be that some old-timer passed them off on an unsuspecting tenderfoot who accepted them as factual. O N JULY
Mr. Tripp, a former president of the Utah Statewide Archaeological Society and a volunteer in the Antiquities Section of the Utah State Historical Society, is presently on a mission in Mexico for the LDS church. 1 Andrew Jenson, Church Chronology (Salt Lake City, 1899), p. 34. 2 See Albert Carrington's description cited in J . Roderick Korns, ed.. West from Fort Bridger: The Pioneering of the Immigrant Trails across Utah, 1846-1850, published as vol. 19 of Utah Historical Quarterly (1951): 136 n. 28. 3 Howard Stansbury, Exploration and Survey of the Valley of the Great Salt Lake (Philadelphia, 1852), p. 118.
