1. Settling the Great Basin
Chapter 7

2. Bell Activity Your word is “survey”
This is a no gum class. Please dispose of it properly!
Your word is “survey”
Find the word on your salmon (orange/pink) study guide and complete the following information for the word.
Find the definition using a glossary.
Use your own knowledge and experience to complete the rest of the definition.
Where should your backpack be?

3. Does your work look something like this?
Word: survey
My Understanding:
Definition:
Draw a picture of it:
Sentence:
Synonym/ Example:
Antonym/Non-Example:

4. Does your work look something like this?
Word: survey
My Understanding:
Definition: the act of determining the
Draw a picture of it:
exact boundaries of a parcel of land
Sentence: The Mormons surveyed the
land to create new settlements, like Salt
Lake City.
Synonym/ Example: analysis, appraisal; map
Antonym/Non-Example: uncharted unappraised

5. Today we will learn…
History Objective – We will describe the tasks the pioneers were faced with when they began to settle the Salt Lake Valley.
Behavior Objective – Work Ethic: We will stay on task and listen for important information.
Language Objective – We will listen for important details and write what we learn in our notes.

6. Settling the Great Basin
Video clip: Exodus
Preparing the Valley
Salt Lake City
The First Year
Take out a piece of paper and divide it into four boxes.
Title them like you see here.

7. Utah: The Struggle for Statehood
How did Brigham Young prepare for the move West? What resources did he use to plan for the move? How did he use the reports of explorers and the war with Mexico to help his people?

8. A New Home in the West
The Mormons had three important tasks to complete before winter came.
They needed to plant crops.
They had to build homes.
They needed to explore the valley.

9. Exploring the Valley
The Mormons arrived in the Salt Lake Valley on July 24, Within two hours, they were digging trenches for farming and irrigation.
Two days later sixteen men were sent to explore the area around the Great Salt Lake and the surrounding valleys.

10. Valleys Around the Salt Lake
Tooele and Utah Valley were seen very early on. They described the Indians living in these areas as peaceful.
August, they had also explored Bear River and Cache Valleys.
At the present day site of Ogden, they found Miles Goodyear’s Fort Buenaventura where they saw some log buildings, corrals, and herds of cattle, horses, goats, and “some sheep that needed shearing.”

11. Building Their New Home
To build shelters, the men of the Advance Pioneer Company went into the canyons and cut timber. Oxen dragged the logs to the site of a new fort.
The men built an adobe fort called the old fort.
They made bricks from wet clay and plant fibers then dried in the sun.
The fort’s wall was 8 to 9 feet tall, and 27 inches thick.

12. Inside the Fort
Log cabins were built inside the fort along the inside of the walls.
Each house was 16 feet long and 14 feet wide.
The open space in the middle was shared by everyone, but is was also a place to keep their animals.
The site of Old Fort is now Pioneer Park in Salt Lake City.

13. City Creek
The day after they arrived in the valley, the pioneers dammed up City Creek, flooded some land at 4th South and East Temple Street, and planted potatoes. By July 31 corn was up two inches.
By December the potatoes were the size of silver dollars and 2,000 acres of winter wheat had been planted.
All of the plants depended on irrigation water.

14. Laying Out Salt Lake City
Brigham Young assigned Orson Pratt and H.G. Sherwood to lay out a grid system for new city.
They had first used this system in Nauvoo, Illinois.
The surveying was finished by late August 1847.

15. The Plan for a Modern City
There were 135 blocks, each having 10 acres divided into 8 lots where houses and gardens could be made.
The streets were wide enough to turn around a wagon and team.
Three public squares were set aside, which are now the Salt Lake City and County Building, Liberty Park, and Pioneer Park.

16. Modern Salt Lake City

17. The First Winter
In September, the first large groups of pioneers arrived in Salt Lake Valley.
1,540 people
580 wagons
124 horses
9 mules
2,213 oxen
887 cows
358 sheep
35 hogs
716 chicken

18. Hungry Times
By late September, however, “Cattle and horses entirely destroyed the crops sown, except the potatoes, the tops of which they ate smooth with the ground.”
Although the winter was fairly mild, food was scarce.
The Pioneers killed some of their cows for meat, but there was little vegetables or flour.
The people made do, eating crows, hawks, wolf, thistle tops and roots, and sego lily bulbs.

19. Mormon Crickets
The next Spring, clouds of black crickets began eating the crops.
Harriet Young, one of the first women in the valley, wrote in her diary
“Today, to our utter astonishment, the crickets came by millions, sweeping everything before them. They first attacked a patch of beans for us and in twenty minutes there were no beans to be seen. They next swept over peas, then came into our garden; took everything clean.”
When it got worse some people talked of leaving to go to California.

20. Crickets and Seagulls
The Pioneers fought the crickets, trying to protect their crops.
They banged pots, swept them off with brooms,gathered them up in baskets to burn or dump in the river.
Partial relief came when flocks of seagulls filled the sky, gorging on the crickets for weeks.
Some saw this as a miracle, which is why the California gull is the state bird of Utah.
Years later the gulls returned as did the crickets. Problems with the crickets lasted for many years.
They still threaten areas of Delta, Tooele and other places.

21. Difficult Times
The first few years in Utah were difficult for the Mormon Pioneers.
But Brigham Young was right, it was the right place. The Wasatch Front was the only good place to settle for hundreds of miles.
Very soon others would arrive in the valley, Mormons and non-Mormons.
The first burial occurred on September 27, 1847, when George Wallace buried his child, Mary Wallace. The burial was two months after the Mormon pioneers had settled the Salt Lake Valley. In 1849, George Wallace, Daniel Wells, and Joseph Heywood surveyed 20ﾊacres (81,000ﾊm2) at the same site for the area's burial grounds. In 1851, Salt Lake City was incorporated and the 20ﾊacres (81,000ﾊm2) officially became the Salt Lake City Cemetery with George Wallace as its first sexton.

22. Bell Activity Your word is “bowery”
This is a no gum class. Please dispose of it properly!
Your word is “bowery”
Find the word on your salmon (orange/pink) study guide and complete the following information for the word.
Find the definition using a glossary.
Use your own knowledge and experience to complete the rest of the definition.
Where should your backpack be?

23. Does your work look something like this?
Word: bowery
My Understanding:
Definition: a shaded place for holding
Draw a picture of it:
meetings
Sentence: One of the first structures
built in Salt Lake City was a bowery
where the Mormons could hold meetings.
Synonym/ Example: pavilion, gazebo
Antonym/Non-Example: house, church

24. Tierra Incognita & This is the Place
Video Questions
As you watch the video clips today, listen for details you didn’t know before and write them down. Then in the last segment, write a list of the problems the Mormon pioneers faced their first year in Utah and how they solved the problems.
Tierra Incognita & This is the Place
Survival
Problems Solutions
Deseret
The Utah Territory

25. Bell Activity Your word is “perpetuate”
This is a no gum class. Please dispose of it properly!
Your word is “perpetuate”
Find the word on your salmon (orange/pink) study guide and complete the following information for the word.
Find the definition using a glossary.
Use your own knowledge and experience to complete the rest of the definition.
Where should your backpack be?

26. Does your work look something like this?
Word: perpetuate
My Understanding:
Definition: to cause to continue
Draw a picture of it:
indefinitely
Sentence: Many immigrants
perpetually come to Utah.
Synonym/ Example: continue, carry on
Antonym/Non-Example: end, cease, stop

27. Bell Activity Your word is “”
This is a no gum class. Please dispose of it properly!
Your word is “”
Find the word on your salmon (orange/pink) study guide and complete the following information for the word.
Find the definition using a glossary.
Use your own knowledge and experience to complete the rest of the definition.
Where should your backpack be?

28. Does your work look something like this?
Word: perpetuate
My Understanding:
Definition: a
Draw a picture of it:
Sentence: O
Synonym/ Example:
Antonym/Non-Example: