How would Utah be occupied if...

The Utes, silly. Also Navajo and Uintah and Ouray.

I'm guessing you probably meant what whites "settle" there, though, really, they'd be both nomadic and immigrants.

Without the Mormons, the state would probably more closely resemble Arizona in its southern region, Colorado further north. That is, it'd have many who'd trade with Navajos in the south, and vicious exclusionists of the type that "settled" Colorado coming to northern Utah.

To the north of Utah, quite a few Chinese immigrants played a big part in Idaho's early history as a territory before being driven out of the area. It'd be interesting to have them play a big part in Utah's history.
 
This could be VERY interesting. One thing that immediately occurs to me is that Utah was settled for two reasons, Mormonism and minerals. If the Mormons don't exist, the minerals still will. Mining will thus be even more important than OTL, and could well be the cause of most settlement. It's a little-known fact that lots of the people who moved to Utah to work in the mines were Greek and Eastern European immigrants. Without Mormons, Utah is likely to be much more heavily "ethnic": the Greek community and the Greek Orthodox Church will play even more significant roles than they do OTL. I would expect a very sizeable Italian and Roman Catholic community too. Settlement patterns will be very different; the Salt Lake Valley would probably still be an important point along the Gold Rush trail, but *SLC might end up eclipsed by mining cities like Price and Park City because I suspect that without the Mormon pioneers, settlement wouldn't really get underway until after the Civil War. The largest cities could well end up farther south than OTL, closer to the Bingham Canyon mine and other mineral deposits, approximately where Lehi and American Fork are today.

Another thing is that the ends of the Transcontinental Railroad will still meet up in Utah because of simple geography; if there aren't already established settlements elsewhere, this could result in larger towns north of the GSL. Corinne could end up being the capital after all, and judging by what it was like OTL, a Utah without any Mormons would likely be a pretty wild place :D. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corinne,_Utah

One effect of this by the late 19th century would be that the labor movement would be a LOT more powerful in Utah. It could well become a bastion of the progressive movement, and might still be a swing state today.

Edit: AmIndHistoryAuthor, that's a GREAT point about the Chinese, I hadn't considered that.
 

Hnau

Banned
Salt Lake City might still be the name of the city next to the Great Salt Lake. Nothing in Latter-day Saint religion makes that name special. However, naming would be extremely different all over, as lots of towns and cities there are named after famous early members of the LDS Church or out of figures from the Book of Mormon. Also, I don't think Utah would be more progressive... the Latter-day Saints pushed for woman suffrage and as such the Territory of Utah became one of the first governments to give women the right to vote. It was right with the rest of the western states in the Populist movement, if only it could have gotten statehood to participate in the presidential election of 1892.

This definitely delays the colonization/occupation of the entirety of the West. LDS pioneers were crucial for paving the way to the Far West. Brigham Young was adamant that pioneers should not just race to Utah, but that they should build bridges, blaze trails, agricultural outposts, forts, and inns, print maps. The Latter-day Saints were the first to really begin planning for the colonization of the entire American West, before the Gold Rush and the Mexican-American War caught the attention of the US government.

Otherwise, I do think that Utah would be more of a swing state, closer to Colorado and New Mexico. Actually, Arizona and Idaho would too, without LDS influence, but, then, the political borderline between the Republicans and Democrats might be different.

Gold Rush is likely to be butterflied a year or two later, without LDS workmen providing enough labor at Sutter's Mill and without Sam Brannan at Yerba Buena. San Francisco was basically an LDS colony-port for a year, with New York Latter-day Saints arriving on the Brooklyn and bringing the first printing press, flour mill, and twice as many settlers as Yerba Buena had at the time.
 
I would have thought that the Utah Territory could end up as another Indian Territory, but the other views mentioned here probably mitigate that.
 
Salt Lake City might still be the name of the city next to the Great Salt Lake. Nothing in Latter-day Saint religion makes that name special. However, naming would be extremely different all over, as lots of towns and cities there are named after famous early members of the LDS Church or out of figures from the Book of Mormon. Also, I don't think Utah would be more progressive... the Latter-day Saints pushed for woman suffrage and as such the Territory of Utah became one of the first governments to give women the right to vote. It was right with the rest of the western states in the Populist movement, if only it could have gotten statehood to participate in the presidential election of 1892.

This definitely delays the colonization/occupation of the entirety of the West. LDS pioneers were crucial for paving the way to the Far West. Brigham Young was adamant that pioneers should not just race to Utah, but that they should build bridges, blaze trails, agricultural outposts, forts, and inns, print maps. The Latter-day Saints were the first to really begin planning for the colonization of the entire American West, before the Gold Rush and the Mexican-American War caught the attention of the US government.

Otherwise, I do think that Utah would be more of a swing state, closer to Colorado and New Mexico. Actually, Arizona and Idaho would too, without LDS influence, but, then, the political borderline between the Republicans and Democrats might be different.

Gold Rush is likely to be butterflied a year or two later, without LDS workmen providing enough labor at Sutter's Mill and without Sam Brannan at Yerba Buena. San Francisco was basically an LDS colony-port for a year, with New York Latter-day Saints arriving on the Brooklyn and bringing the first printing press, flour mill, and twice as many settlers as Yerba Buena had at the time.

You're absolutely right about naming: Brigham City, Moroni, Zion NP, Hyrum, Smithfield, Woodruff, Rich County...they'd all have different names or not exist at all, and those are just the ones that pop into my head immediately because I used to live near some of those places :D

And you're right that the development and settlement of the entire West would be set back: what the Mormons accomplished in the 1840's and '50's in terms of urban planning, irrigation engineering, and agriculture was nothing less than amazing, and they often don't get the credit they deserve for it. The population of the West would be quite a bit lower without them, both because of their large family sizes and the delay in developing the region.

I wonder if politically this Utah would be like a Rocky Mountain version of West Virginia (and bear with me, because this is a butterfly-free analogy). A bastion of organized labor and the more social-democratic left, it begins to trend more to the right in presidential elections once labor goes into decline and the left-leaning party becomes more environmentalist-friendly.

For that matter, I suspect the borders of the Western states would be very different.
 
For that matter, I suspect the borders of the Western states would be very different.

Probably since a lot of the territorial and later state divisions were a product of the Utah wars and the proposed (and failed) state of Deseret.
 
Utah would be like AZ and NM, being a 'desert frontier' state.... it would probably have fewer people, become a state later than it did in OTL, and also probably have more and bigger Native American reservations...
 

Hnau

Banned
I also wonder, if there is a Civil War analogue, if Nevada would include all of Utah as well. After all, Utah Territory covered both states, and really the only reason to keep Nevada from stretching into the east was because it was felt as if the Mormons couldn't be trusted.
 
I also wonder, if there is a Civil War analogue, if Nevada would include all of Utah as well. After all, Utah Territory covered both states, and really the only reason to keep Nevada from stretching into the east was because it was felt as if the Mormons couldn't be trusted.

This is my thought as well. Nevada was barely populated enough to become a state in 1864 as it was, so making it include as many people as possible would make sense. So, two fewer Senators in the US; the are of Utah would be less populated than OTL as well, so those House seats would be distributed elsewhere (and we likely ended up with a number other than the random 435 of OTL)
 
This is my thought as well. Nevada was barely populated enough to become a state in 1864 as it was, so making it include as many people as possible would make sense. So, two fewer Senators in the US; the are of Utah would be less populated than OTL as well, so those House seats would be distributed elsewhere (and we likely ended up with a number other than the random 435 of OTL)

Another thing to consider is that admitting all of Utah Territory as one state could set a precedent for admitting other western territories as well. New Mexico and Dakota territories might not be split, and OTL Idaho might simply be partitioned among Oregon and Washington instead of made its own state. So there could be as many as eight fewer Senators. The political influence of the West would be greatly reduced. Plus, the Western states would be HUGE.
 
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