The Fascinating History of The Mormons & The State of Utah
I’m traveling to Salt Lake City on Monday to attend the Permissionless III conference. This will be my first time in Utah, a state whose history is closely tied to that of the Mormon Church, otherwise known as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
I’ve been reading up on the fascinating history of this state, its people, and the conflicts that forged it. The YouTuber Johnny Harris, who grew up in the Church and has since left, has a great series on the story of the Mormons and of the State of Utah.
The story of the Church’s founder, Joseph Smith, is fascinating. But here, I’ll focus primarily on how the Mormons arrived in Utah and the initial years following their settlement.
How the Mormons Landed in Utah
The Mormons arrived in Utah in the mid-19th century after being chased out of New York, Missouri, and Illinois. They fled their city of Nauvoo in Illinois after Joseph Smith was killed by a mob while being held on charges of treason. They headed west, aiming to travel outside the boundaries of the U.S. into what was then Mexican territory. But that would change soon after.
When thousands of Mormons arrived in the Great Basin, at the foot of the Wasatch Mountain Range, the U.S. and Mexico were at war following the American annexation of Texas in 1845. The war resulted in Mexico ceding their territory, which made up most of the present-day western U.S. The Mormons found themselves back on American soil just a year after landing in Utah.
The Dream of Deseret
For a quarter century after settling in and around Salt Lake, around 80,000 settlers arrived in the region. Missionaries traveled all over Europe and as far as India and Australia to recruit and convert new members, with the community often funding their journey across the Atlantic and the Great Plains.
Those early settlers were known to be industrious and highly motivated, building water irrigation systems, farming the land, and constructing buildings at an impressive speed. They eventually adopted the honeybee as a symbol of their hard work. According to Mormon scripture, the ancient word for honeybee is deseret. When it came time to name their new state, Deseret was chosen.
Although it would eventually adopt the name Utah, after the First Nations people who lived there for thousands of years prior, the beehive became a symbol closely associated with the spirit of the state. It can be found all over Utah, and there is a stone in the Washington Monument representing the State of Deseret.
The Mormons initially planned for their state to include parts of modern-day Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, and Wyoming. This was a massive swath of land. I found different estimates for its size, some as high as 500,000 square miles—twice the size of Texas.
United States vs. The Mormons
Around this time, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and their settlement were gaining a lot of power in their new proto-state. The church’s new prophet, Brigham Young, promoted the practice of plural marriage in 1852. His predecessor, Joseph Smith, had introduced the practice to some of the high-ranking members of the Church and practiced polygamy himself when he was still alive. Smith and Young both had 40 to 50 wives, including girls as young as 13.
Polygamy was seen in the Mormon community as virtuous—a divine revelation from God restoring ancient biblical practices. People believed that plural marriage would lead to higher spiritual status for both men and women in the afterlife.
The U.S. government didn’t see polygamy in the same light. Outside their community, Mormons were portrayed as immoral and un-American and were criticized for oppressing women (go 19th century America!) As tensions rose between an increasingly powerful Mormon community pushing un-Christian values and the federal government, the U.S. Army invaded Utah in 1857. The Utah Mormon War (or the Mormon Rebellion) was more of a confrontation than an all-out war. Only 150 people were killed, of which 120 were civilians, massacred by Mormon soldiers who mistook them for a military expedition.
The resolution of the war saw Brigham Young replaced as Governor of Utah with a non-Mormon and allowed federal troops to enter the territory in exchange for pardoning settlers for any potential rebellious acts. The Utah War Peace Commission restored federal authority, although the coexistence between the Mormons and the U.S. Army remained tense. Troops eventually left when they were called back east in 1861 at the start of the American Civil War.
The U.S. government eventually outlawed polygamy in the Morrill Anti-Bigamy Act of 1862, which criminalized the practice. Many Mormons now found themselves as felons, and some were sent to jail for continuing to practice plural marriage. Later, the Church would go on to ban polygamy, threatening to excommunicate those who engaged in the practice. Those who continued to believe in earlier divine revelations promoting polygamy settled in Arizona in the community of Short Creek. These Mormons would branch off into the infamous Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS). Known for its practice of polygamy and forced marriage, including of children, their leader Warren Jeffs is now serving a life sentence for raping kids.
As I learned about the history of the Mormons, the echos with the ethos of the crypto community stood out. Both started as underdogs seeking to carve out a space to live (or, in the case of crypto, work and start companies) according to their principles. Much like the Mormons were pushed west in search of a home, the crypto community often finds itself at odds with traditional finance and government authorities.
Crypto also has its fringe movements and outcasts who have broken off from the rest of the community while the rest of us try to find balance, acceptance, and adoption. In the end, the Mormons found middle ground, but not without sacrifice. The question remains: How much of crypto’s ethos will we have to give up, and what will be the cost of continued defiance?